


The Roads We Take

by District_7_Profanity



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: AU, F/F, F/M, Joniss - Freeform, orange is the new black AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-03-13 04:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3368258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/District_7_Profanity/pseuds/District_7_Profanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss Everdeen is sentenced to serve time for a crime she committed five years ago, with her then-girlfriend Johanna Mason. She leaves behind her fiance, Peeta, and her family to spend 15 months in a women's prison. ..Then her ex-girlfriend shows up. JONISS Orange is the New Black! Rated M for sex/language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Wasn't Ready

I've always loved getting clean. I love baths. I love showers. I haven't felt at home too many places but in the bathtub, I always am. It's my happy place.

It  _was_  my happy place.

The water in this shower has a mildew smell to it and there are legions of bacteria clinging to the pink walls. The temperature is somewhere just below my natural body heat and never gets much warmer than a room temperature soda. The flimsy shower curtain behind me whips back and I whirl around to see who would've invaded my happy time. As happy as I can get these days, anyway.

I meet the disinterested gaze of a black woman, her burning brown eyes boring into mine. "O-oh I'll be out in a sec," I say as I turn off the water. I grab my towel from the hook next to me and wrap it around my body.

"There best be some hot water left," the woman barks, eyeing me up and down with an unimpressed expression. I nod my head and side-step out of the small cubicle in which we shower. The woman curls her fingers around my towel and pulls it away from my body. Her lower lip protrudes. "You got nice titties, I'll give you that."

I blush even though this is a grave invasion of my privacy. Privacy is something I'm no longer afforded. "Um, thank you."

"You got them TV titties. They stand up on their own, all perky and everything." She giggles at me. I think she's about ten or fifteen years my senior, in her thirties or near forty. Too old to be giggling but I'm not about to tell her since she's got about thirty or forty pounds on me.

"Okay," I respond evenly. These women have been in prison longer than I have. They are used to this massive invasion of privacy, this daily ritual of nakedness and intimidation. I'm not. I don't think I ever will be. Even when I was living in the real world, the outside world, I loved having my privacy. I had blackout curtains on my windows, I kept to myself and didn't have a lot of friends. I tolerated nights out in bars or in fancy hotels but I was much more comfortable in the woods with my brother Gale or at home reading a book.

"Now get the fuck out the way!" she yells at me annoyedly, hands gesticulating wildly. I move out of the way of the shower and she turns on the water and begins singing some old 60's tune that makes the pit of my stomach burble. That was one of  _her_ favorite songs.  _I was born by the river, in a little tent. Oh and just like the river I've been runnin' ever since._

_It's been a long, long time comin' but I know a change gon' come._

* * *

_Four Weeks Before Day One_

"Is this for real?" That's how he phrases it to me once he finishes reading the papers the federal agents delivered to our cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, New York. That's what he thinks of me. He thinks so highly of me that he's sure this must be a joke. Peeta grips the papers in his hand - the papers that tell everyone I was part of an international drug smuggling ring - and is just bewildered. "How did I not know about this?"

I shake my head like I don't know. But I do. I didn't want to tell him. I didn't want anyone to know about my years with  _her._ I wanted to erase her and everything she was and everything she made me from my memory and start over. Start clean. "I'm sorry," I reply, unable to look him in the eyes.

"I told you everything about me. The webcam horror. The thing with my brothers and their dicks." He ruffles his blond hair and paces to and fro in our living room. He's right, of course. We've always been honest with each other in the two years we've been dating. Except that I kept three years of my life a giant secret.

"What was I supposed to say?" I ask, looking up at him. "It was my lost soul after-college time. I was so embarrassed about everything after." I don't want to explain it to him because I'm actually more angry than embarrassed or sad at this point. I can't believe she betrayed me. Even after all these years, I can't believe she would do this to me. To other people, sure, but not to me. "I can't believe she did this."

His eyes widen. "I can't believe  _you_ did this! I mean, smuggling drugs over international borders?"

"I didn't smuggle drugs," I contest hotly. He's unimpressed. "I smuggled drug  _money_." He wouldn't know, but there's a big fucking difference there. She made sure that if I was involved, it was never with the actual drugs. She didn't like to touch them herself, either. It was her fucked up way of protecting me, I guess.

"I feel like I'm in a Bourne movie. Have you  _killed_?" he asks, but I can tell he's joking. There's a small lift of the corner of his mouth. He stops pacing and comes to sit next to me. I scan over the papers in his hand. My name is plastered everywhere on this official looking indictment.  _Her_ name isn't even on here though she must've been the one who named me. I didn't make any friends with her drug-smuggling cohorts. I wasn't there for them. I was there for her. It makes my heart palpitate inside my chest to see the reality of the charges against me. I don't like to be in trouble.

"Witness states, Katniss Everdeen carried drug money. Katniss Everdeen was part of the ring," I recite off the paper glumly.

"Were you?" Peeta inquires genuinely, looking over at me. He wraps his arm over my shoulder and I nod, leaning into his embrace.

"I was 22!" I protest, as if my age gives me the right to do what I want. I was just out of college, fresh-faced and looking for adventure. I found it. That, and much, much more. "I was in love. It was crazy and - and for a while, fun. Then it got scary and I ran away. I became the nice young girl from the good home that I was supposed to be." Anger bubbles up inside me. All the times she said she loved me, she was lying. No one who loves someone could put them through this. " _Fuck_   _her_. I can't fucking believe this."

There's a lot of silence as Peeta digests this information. I never told him about  _her_ , about my past. Now he's learning that I'm a bisexual criminal who smuggled drug money for my girlfriend who ran an international drug cartel that spanned the entire globe. And he's learning that I enjoyed it. Part of it, at least. The unassuming girl he met two years ago is an entirely different animal.

"It's not okay," he begins, looking down at the paper. "But we'll get through this, okay?" He's always so calm, so even, that I want to shake him.  _Be mad at me!_  I think. But he's sailed right past anger to acceptance. We are going to get through this, but it's going to take a while.

"You should break up with me," I advise. "You didn't sign up for all this crazy."

Peeta smiles genially and kisses me on the temple. "I signed up for everything, Katniss."

* * *

_Two Weeks Before Day One_

My mother's mouth is hanging open. Gale looks smug, but not as a brother normally would. I was always the model child and Gale the outsider. I did well in school, kept to myself, graduated college. Gale took off out of high school and disappeared for a while into the woods. When I left to travel the globe with  _her_ he came back home, met up with my best friend Madge, and they got married a year later. He invested the money we got from my father's inheritance in a start-up company and now has more money than he knows what to do with.

He's smug because he knew. Madge I told, but Gale discovered it. Aside from that, we've always been close and he's always known me very well. "So, I never carried drugs. Just money." I want to make that clear but just like Peeta, nobody seems to get it. Carrying money is a far lesser offense than carrying drugs.

"You were a  _lesbian_?" my mother asks, bewildered. Out of all the information she just processed, that's what she can't wrap her mind around.

"I ...was?" I respond, and Peeta puts his hand on my knee. I'm glad he's here. There's a steadiness that Peeta brings to everything that I need wholeheartedly right now. "I'm bisexual, if you feel the need for labels. I was with a woman, yes, and now I'm with Peeta."

My mother's eyes, bright blue like my little sister Prim's, move to Peeta. "You knew about this?" My mother took to Peeta right away. I think after I disappeared for a while she thought I'd never settle down, never give her the grandchildren she so desired. Madge is pregnant now, though, so luckily that moves the burden off Peeta and I. Prim is only 17 still. As I look at her, she seems unaffected by this information. There's sympathy in her eyes, too. Gale and I are much closer in age, but Prim and I are close emotionally. Though I do feel guilt for basically having stepped out of her life for the years I was with  _her_.

Peeta shakes his head. "No, I-I didn't. I knew she traveled after college but I didn't know about the girlfriend or the international drug smuggling ring. Imagine my surprise."

My mother brings her gaze back to me. "What on Earth did you do with the money?" Again, another bizarre question. Like I would take the money for myself. I barely saw the money. She paid for everything. She took care of everything, including me. When I did it, I didn't even know what I was taking.

"Well, mother, I wasn't really in it for the money," I explain. Gale chuckles and my mother leans back into her couch, placing her hand over her forehead. Peeta's arm wraps around my back and brings me in against him. Prim eyes me sympathetically.

I wasn't. It was never about the money. It wasn't even about the traveling, after a while. It was always just about  _her_.

* * *

_The Day Before Day One_...

Madge took to pregnancy really well. There's that saying that pregnant women have a glow about them but in my experience, most pregnant women look miserable. They look like friends who are carrying moving boxes for someone else. But not Madge. Her hair, a golden cornsilk color, is even shinier than usual in her two cute little plaits. The bar we're in is too loud for our tastes but her husband Gale and my fiancé, Peeta, thought we should have a going away party for me. Like I'm moving towns or something, instead of going to women's prison for over a year.

"I can't believe you're going to jail," she laments, taking a sip of her seltzer and peering over the bubbly beverage at me. Madge was the more adventurous of the two of us growing up, but when she settled down, I uprooted. We've always complemented each other that way.

"Prison," I correct automatically, "not jail." That statement -  _I can't believe you're going to jail_ \- has been repeated to me about 3,000 times in the last few weeks. From the moment the cops came to tell me I was named in the indictment, life became a blur. Telling my widowed mother, my brother Gale, my sister Primrose that I was going to jail for a crime I committed years ago was embarrassing. It was a great day in a series of great days I've been having with lawyers and cops over the past few weeks. Explaining to a fat man stuffed in a cheap suit that yes, I was with her, yes, I carried the money, no, I don't know anything else about the cartel. Detailing the exploits of my time as the girlfriend of a woman who worked just under the most prolific drug dealer in the world hasn't exactly been a great experience.

Madge pouts at me. She and I have known each other since high school. We left home together and went to the same university where she studied business and I fucked off and barely graduated with a useless major in English Literature. Then she met and tamed my brother while I met and tried to tame  _her_. "You're going to miss my baby shower."

"I know," I lament, putting my hand over hers. I was so excited when Madge told me she was pregnant. She and Gale have been married a little while now and their relationship is enviable. They're both successful, funny, good-looking people who are madly in love. Usually you don't have all the gears working in a relationship, but they do. Perhaps a tad eccentric but there's nothing wrong with that. Those are the types of people who should be bringing babies into the world. "I'm so sorry."

Not people like me. Future convicts with shady pasts. Madge knows all about my lost years with  _her_. She's the only one who ever met her. She's the only person I told, both out of excitement for my newfound freedom and happiness, and out of fear since no one knew where I was most of the time, and she was my alibi.

Not a good enough alibi, evidently, since tomorrow I'm going to prison for the next fifteen months. I will miss Madge's baby shower. I will miss the birth of my niece or nephew. I'll miss the dumb Christening ceremony her mother is making her do and I won't be named a godparent. I'll miss the grand re-opening of the book store we bought together.

As I look up I catch the affectionate blue eyes of Peeta. I'll miss him, too. His life won't be too different - he'll get up and go to work at the newspaper - but I'll be gone from it. We won't be able to go on that vacation to Scotland like we were hoping. Our wedding will be pushed off until way after I get out. I won't be Mrs. Peeta Mellark, bookstore owner and wife. Instead I'll be Katniss Everdeen, ex-con.

After we gorge ourselves on food and drink until we require taxis to get home to our cozy apartment in Brooklyn, we settle into bed together. My goodbye to Madge was sad, but she promised to visit me once I was cleared for visitors.

I'll miss this bed. I love the quilted blanket and the softness of the sheets. I'll miss the warmth of another body sleeping with mine. Peeta wraps his strong arms around me and pulls me close, inhaling the scent of my hair. I must be tense because he pulls back and places his hand on my chin, forcing me to look up at him. His smile is gentle, as gentle as he is. "We don't have to do this, you know."

I smile at him and put my hand on his cheek, tracing the sharp incline of his jaw. His kindness to me has been unfailing, even after I disclosed my spotted past to him. He was disappointed, but not that I had committed a felony, but rather that I had lied to him. Once he got over that betrayal we worked toward making the weeks I had left meaningful. There's no way I could repay him for all that he's done. For all that he's been to me in this time.

"I want to," I assure him. I've never been a sexual person; the thought of fifteen months without sex doesn't bother me. There was a time - my time with  _her_ \- that I developed a voracious sexual appetite I didn't know I possessed. I've never been that way with Peeta. Comparatively I suppose I'm the aggressor in most of our intimate times, but that chronic hunger isn't there like it was. That's not who we are. Our relationship is safe. It's comfortable. We have sex occasionally and that, too, is gentle and safe and loving. The way it should be.

But I owe him this. One last night of our lips together, our bodies connected, feeling him inside of me. It will mean much more to him than to me and that's fine. I love him and I want him to have this memory of me. His hands are around my back as he moves half on top of me, his lips on mine. Suddenly he pulls away from me, his eyes full of worry. "You're crying."

Am I? I feel my face and realize he's right, there are a few tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes. And why not? My life that I worked extremely hard to put together after I left  _her_  is falling apart. I will be on pause while everyone else in my life, all the people I love, will be moving along just fine. "I know," I reply and grab a fistful of his shirt. I don't want his pity, his worry. "Just fuck me."

For a split second he looks surprised, but then his face softens. "Katniss," he says kindly, in spite of the desire I see in his eyes.

But I don't want his softness. I lean up and plant a firm kiss on his lips and loop one arm around his neck to keep him there. He complies, of course, and kisses me back fiercely. My other hand snakes beneath the elastic waistband of his sleeping pants and down his pelvis. I wrap my fingers around his shaft and begin slow stroking movements. He's not going to back out now. I won't let him.

Sometimes Peeta can be a real pussy. But not tonight. Not tonight when I need his strength, his comfort, to last me through the next 64 weeks.

* * *

_Day One_

Our goodbye is short. I promise not to let anyone into my granny panties and he promises to help Madge with the store. It's not as if I'll never see Peeta again. He'll be the first person to visit me once I can accept visitors. And I get phone calls! Yes, between phone calls and visits and all the books I want to get through, the time will fly, I'm sure of it. He takes my cell phone and my engagement ring and puts them in his pocket. We kiss, short and chaste, as the officer by the door waits impatiently.

"Let's go Everdeen," she barks. I turn around and eye her nametag. York. Officer York, a fit, no-nonsense, middle-aged woman who looks former military to me. After Peeta leaves we go into the processing room and she appraises me with tired hazel eyes. "What size are you?"

"Six and a half," I respond. "Seven, actually." She hands me shoes and puts them on top of the bedding and uniform I'm carrying. I look at the orange, standard-issue sneakers in my face. I can smell the cheap rubber on the sole. "Those are cute. Like Toms."

"Who's Tom?" she asks brusquely and somewhat disinterestedly.

For a moment I think she's joking but it occurs to me this woman probably does not make jokes. "They're shoes. When you buy a pair they buy one for kids in need. They look like these." As I'm speaking I can tell she's rapidly losing interest so I stop.

"Sounds great. Strip." I widen my eyes as I have the flashback of  _her_ that always seems to find me. It doesn't matter what I do or where I go, her memory follows me like a bad cold.

_Five Years Ago_

I remember her dazzling smile as she walked into the elevator I was in. It was some swanky hotel that my sorority had rented for a night or two right after Madge and I had graduated. Madge was already asleep in our room but I couldn't go to sleep. Around one in the morning I went down to the lobby to get some Tylenol PM. A black-haired girl ran into my elevator just as it closed. Instead of turning around like a normal person, she stared right at me. She was beautiful. But it was her smile, like she knew all of my life's secrets, that drew me in.

"You don't look like the type of girl who frequents hotels this early in the morning, kid," she says, her voice like honey. I want to pour her all over me. Whoa, what? Where the hell did that come from?

She's grinning at me and I can tell I'm being teased. Normally I don't like that, but... She's wearing a deep emerald dress that clings to her in all the right places and her stiletto heels raise her height to just above mine. Her hair is black, a choppy cut that's just passed her shoulders with a few streaks of red through her tresses. Her eyes are brown and wide-set behind a pair of thick-rimmed black glasses. In short, she looks like sex in heels and I think I'm sweating. I'd let her tease me whenever she wants.

"And you do?" I question, using my hand with the packet of Tylenol PM in it to wave at her formal outfit. She grabs my hand and turns it over, exposing the drugs.

"Why else would I be dressed like this at some hotel in the middle of nowhere, brainless?" I balk at her term of address but let it slide. "Can't sleep?" she asks, nodding toward my pills, stepping ever-so-slightly closer to me. I suddenly realize the elevator hasn't moved. Neither of us has hit any buttons.

I shake my head. "No. I have a hard time going to sleep at night," I confess for no other reason other than I want her to keep talking to me. And it's true. Ever since my father died I've had pretty awful night terrors that wake me and keep me awake, or it takes me a few hours to fall asleep.

"That right?" She gets down on one knee and unties the side of her heel, then the other. She kicks them off into the elevator and hits the '17' button as she rises from the ground. There's only 17 floors in this hotel; she must be here for quite an event to get the penthouses on the top floor. She spins around. "Unzip me?" she asks, but it's more like a command. I shove the packet in my pocket and grasp the zipper on her dress and slowly drag it down to just above her butt. She has a tattoo on her shoulder, a salt shaker. She also has some roses tattooed on her arm and a tribal band around her wrist. Her dress falls to the ground and my jaw nearly falls with it. The lights that pass us as we ascend reflect off of her breasts when she whirls around to face me again. I'm mesmerized by this light show. She steps closer to me and now my back is pressed against the cool glass. "I know a good way to get tired."

I lick my lips and look down into her face. Now that she's not wearing heels I see that I have a few inches of height on her. She's clad only in a pair of red lace underwear and the heat of her body is pressed against mine. "Oh?" That's all I can manage. Her body is absolutely to fucking die for and I think I'm dying as we stand here.

She nods, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. "Do you want to know what it is?" I nod my head. The elevator opens behind her as we get to her floor. She slips a silver card into my back pocket from the clutch in her hand that I didn't even notice because I was so enthralled by her breasts. She exits in all her glorious nudity on to her floor. "Let's do this again sometime," she calls over her back.

Her hips sway exaggeratedly and I watch like a pubescent boy until the doors close. I numbly press the button for the floor that I'm on and take the silver card out of where she shoved it. The business card is silver with tiny black lettering that only takes up two lines. Her name on the top line: Johanna Mason. And her phone number below it.

I don't know who she is or why she stripped in front of me, but my body is on fire in a way I have never known and in spite of the Tylenol, I can't sleep that night. I want to go back to the 17th floor and find her. I had no idea that making that one decision would dramatically alter the rest of my life.

* * *

_Day One_

After stripping and redressing for Officer York, I am herded into a white van that's parked with the engine on outside the facility. There's a young girl already in there when I scoot in next to her. She's maybe 19 or 20, beautiful curly black hair and flawless caramel skin. She doesn't smile or even look at me as I get in next to her. There's a woman in the front seat, pale as milk. She's got large, rounded sunglasses over her face. Her hair is bright blonde and curled into ringlets. "That it?" she calls in a slightly affected voice.

"No," Officer York barks. "One more. Hold up."

I'm fiddling with the poor jacket they provided me as we wait for the next woman. "My zipper's broken," I say, to one in particular. What I want to say is that it's fucking freezing and I wish I were anywhere but here. But I think that goes without saying.

The woman in the driver's seat eyes me in the rearview mirror. She dips her sunglasses down and I see two shining green eyes. "First time down?"

I scrunch my eyebrows in confusion. "My - my first time here?"

She shakes her head curtly. "No, your first time in prison, dear." Her tone is kind and formal and I reckon she's the escort to and from the prison from her attitude like she's a real estate agent showing me a new home.

"Oh." I nod. "Yeah."

She shrugs her shoulders. "It isn't so terrible. Everyone is mostly decent. You  _must_  be wary of the stealing." The girl next to me and I move our pitiful things closer to our bodies. "What's your name? Your last name, dear. That's what we use here. I'm Trinket." She turns around in her seat and nods to the young girl beside me. "That's Watson."

"Everdeen," I reply softly.

She smiles at me. "How much time did you get?"

"Fifteen months," I tell her. I didn't think you were supposed to ask that. In the books I read it said that wasn't appropriate. Or maybe you don't ask what you're in for. There were so many rules in those books.

Trinket smiles kindly at me. "You'll be out in no time. I have 34 months but I'm hoping to do less with good behavior." My eyes widen in surprise. She's one of us? And they let her drive? She's interrupted by another girl, a shaking, red-haired girl with wild green eyes who climbs in behind us. Officer York slaps the side of the van a few times. "Okay, that's everyone."

"They let you drive?" I ask finally as Trinket settles back into her seat.

She laughs. "Who else is going to do it? We do practically everything around here," she replies with an air of haughtiness that seems wholly inappropriate in this setting.

The blonde woman puts away a magazine she was reading and puts the car into drive. The journey isn't too long but long enough for me, Watson, and the hysterical girl behind us to be cold. I can hear their teeth chattering over my own. Nobody speaks, but I guess this is procedure. What would we have to talk about anyway? That we're sorry for each other's lot? I close my eyes and lean my head on the cold glass of the van and let a memory drown me, trying to glean warmth from it.

_Five Years Ago_

I'm so nervous my palms are sweating. I wipe them on my jeans as I approach the bar at the bottom of the hotel. My plan was to just leave with Madge but I saw her in the lobby and I couldn't resist another chance to talk to her. She's dressed less formally now, in a pair of skinny jeans tucked into a pair of boots. Her black tank top exposes all her tattoos and her pale skin. A few chunky necklaces sit atop her chest, gleaming in the lights of the bar.

There's a table of women that she's talking with, women who look like they might be into Ani DiFranco and Lillith Fair, if that's still a thing. Johanna doesn't look much like them. She doesn't look much like anyone I've ever seen. While she seems out of place among them, she commands their attention.

Mustering up my courage I walk confidently to the bar and order something laden with sugar and alcohol. I sit atop the bar stool and cast looks at her over my shoulder. Finally we make eye contact and I hurriedly return to my drink. She slinks over to me and leans her elbow on the bar. "Whiskey neat," she drawls in a husk to the man behind the bar. She eyes my drink and makes some additional motion to the bartender. Her brown eyes turn to me, engulfing me entirely. "How's it going, brainless?" I roll my eyes at her but I can't stop the grin from spreading on my lips. "All the rest of your high-pitched sisters left."

My sorority sisters were obnoxious. Madge and I spent most our time seeing the sights and ordering room service, but I'm sure Johanna was treated to their immature hijinks. I'm sure she was relieved to see them go. "They're not my sisters."

The corner of her mouth dimples into a smirk. "Sure, kid. Either way, they all left without you. Why'd you stay?" The tumbler of amber liquid is placed in front of her and she sips it, unbothered by the burn that I know comes with drinking straight whiskey.

"Can't sleep." I meet her eyes meaningfully and while they're alight with playfulness, there's a small hint of affection behind them. I take another sip of my drink and watch her carefully. We seem to both be staring each other down, or sizing each other up. I don't know how she does it but she makes me feel young and helpless, but also like I'm the only person in the room. Maybe the only person on the planet.

"What's your name?"

I gulp. "Katniss Everdeen."

Her ruby red lips break into a catlike grin. "And what do you do, Katniss Everdeen?"

"I um, I just graduated." I feel about five years old as I look up at her. I don't know how old she is, probably not much older than me, but she carries a sense of worldliness I do not possess. There's no judgement in her eyes but she looks amused by my naïveté. "And what about you, Johanna Mason?"

Her teeth come out to tug on her bottom lip as her eyes narrow toward me. "I work for an international drug cartel." Her tone is flat and humorless, but her eyes are twinkling. I have no idea if she's serious or not but we both erupt into laughter. She knocks back the remainder of her drink and signals for the bartender. "Charge all this to room 1701. Theirs too," she says, waving to the group of women behind us. The bartender nods. "And send a bottle of champagne on ice to the room for me?" The bartender gives me a look and a lecherous smile and I turn my attention back to her. "Well, Katniss Everdeen, would you like to see my room?"

"Is that what you say to all the girls?" I ask, but I'm sliding off the stool and taking another, final sip of my drink. I'm going to follow her and she knows it, but I don't want her to think I'm easy. I'm not easy, at least not until tonight.

She chuckles in a low tone and begins walking toward the elevators, her boots clicking against the marble. The elevator dings its arrival and we both walk inside the glass enclosure. The moment the doors close and the button is pressed she slams my back against the doors and her hands are in my hair, her lips on mine. I can't help the gasp of arousal that comes out as she plunges her tongue into my mouth, tasting of whiskey and olives. Her teeth and lips are bruising mine but it's not a real hurt. My hands go underneath the hem of her shirt around her back, flattening my palms against her back muscles that flex beneath my touch. She pulls away from me, panting, and holds my face between her hands. "I lied to you, Katniss Everdeen."

"What?" I reply, confused, aroused, and wanting to be in her room as fast as possible. I didn't think I was able to get this turned on this fast but I think I've been wet since the moment her and I locked eyes in the bar.

She grins and runs her thumb over my lips. "I'm not going to help you sleep. I'll get you into bed and your eyes  _will_  be closed." Her lips move to my ear. "But I am going to set every inch of you on fire." I look into her eyes and the flames of desire I see there make me think her promise is true. And god, do I want it. Her lips return to my neck and she laces kisses across my skin and swirls her tongue around my pulse point. I want  _her_. I wasn't ready for how she was going to make me feel. I wasn't ready for her. But if I learned only one thing about Johanna Mason it would be that she was going to happen to me whether I was ready or not.

* * *

_Day One_

I'm shuffled into the facility, Panem Correctional Institute, behind the redhead and Watson. Trinket takes the lead as we get catcalled by women behind bars. One of them wiggles her tongue at me in what I think she believes is a suggestive manner but it's downright disgusting. "I've got to send you all to processing," she announces, like she's giving us a grand tour. "You have your room assignments. I'll meet you back here."

Processing is the routine of fingerprinting us, assigning us badges and generally, making this ordeal as awful as possible. The next room I go into is a blank one with beige walls and no furniture. Behind a pane of glass there are two male officers. One of them is an older man with slicked back gray hair and a thick gray mustache. He might be in his early fifties but still pretty fit. It's ironic that here, where we can't go anywhere, the officers are fit and muscular. Whereas on the streets of New York it's hard to find any officer with over five years of service who can still fit in his issued pants.

"Raise your head, look at the lens," the officer instructs me. I narrow my eyes to see his nametag. Thread, it says. Interesting name. I do as he asks and as he goes to take the picture, there's a large error noise from the computer. "Ah fuck," he laments, smacking the computer angrily. "New guy!" he shouts, startling the bronze-haired man next to him. That officer is ridiculously handsome, young with beautiful sea green eyes and muscles that I can see defined through his shirt. His cheekbones are high and his features almost feminine, giving him a model quality. "Odair, that your name? Odair, fix this shit."

"Did you turn it on?" he asks in a genuine voice.

Thread's face becomes red. "Of course I fuckin' turned it on."

Officer Odair taps a few of the keys and tries to take the picture again. They fail once more. "There's a cord," I pipe up, pointing to the back of the computer. "D-do you think that's supposed to be plugged into something?"

"Shut your fuckin' mouth and stand still," Officer Thread replies, glaring at me with stone gray eyes. I roll my eyes and stand still. Officer Odair looks at the cord I was speaking of and plugs it into the back of the computer. There is a satisfying whirring noise that happens.

Officer Odair smiles at me. "She was right."

Suddenly a bright light flashes. "Next!"

"But I-I wasn't ready," I protest. I wasn't even looking!

"Tough shit."

The next room is with the nurse who is giving me a TB test. The woman is kind, and reminds me a little of my mother. She's got blonde hair that's graying now, pulled back into a sensical bun behind her head. I wince a little as she digs the needle into my arm. "No track marks, nice."

"Thanks," I mumble.

"Any tattoos?" she asks. I'm disoriented but after a few moments I nod. I turn around and lift up my braid to expose the back of my neck. "What's that?"

"A mockingjay," I inform her. "I saw them on vacation. I thought they were beautiful." I sang to them, too, I want to tell her, but I'm sure she won't care. Mockingjays are increasingly endangered but they were one of my favorite animals growing up. Seeing them was one of the best experiences of my life. One that I shared with  _her_.

"It's pretty," she remarks, letting my braid fall to my back.

"Thanks."

Once I've been blinded by the flash, poked and prodded by the nurse and overall demoralized, I'm sent to my advisor, a Mr. Haymitch Abernathy. I walk into his office and he's not quite what I expected. He's an older man like Officer Thread, but his hair is still blonde. It's not short like the military types that work here. It's long, just above his cheekbones in straggly blond pieces. There's a five o'clock shadow on his face that looks pretty permanent. He's got blue eyes like Peeta and a strong build, but there's also the faint smell of alcohol in here, and a tiredness in his features that smacks of old alcoholism.

"Ms. Everdeen, please sit down." I sit in the chair across from his desk, nervously gripping the sides. There's a lot of paperwork in his office. No picture frames or anything meaningful, which is kind of sad. He opens a file and skims over it. "What's Eversee?"

I blink a few times. "Oh. It's the book shop I opened with my best friend Madge." Eversee Books, with a cute little owl on the logo with glasses reading a book. Peeta designed the logo for us. I already miss him.

He nods his head and flips through the papers. "You've got a pretty big case. Criminal conspiracy." He looks at me and, like everyone else, there's a bit of disbelief in his eyes.

"That's what they charged me with," I say, unable to really say anything else. "I carried a suitcase of money. Drug money. Once. Five years ago."

"That's tough," he says, straightening out the papers and placing them back in my file. He clasps his hands over the file and looks at me. "And here you are. Sweating in my chair, costing the taxpayers money." I'm not sure what to say to this so I just sit there and continue to sweat and cost taxpayer money. "Look, Ms. Everdeen, I'm going to be honest with you. You seem like a good kid. A little stupid, but a good kid. This is your only offense and you got fucked with the minimum sentences they put on drug-related charges. I've been here 25 years and I don't understand this system. I got a crack dealer doing nine months and a girl who tapped a police cruiser with her bumper doing 14 years. But no one in here is going to mess with you unless you let them."

"Okay."

He eyes me suspiciously. "Are you going to barf?"

I blink in surprise again. "What? No. I'm not.. I'm not going to barf."

"I will be truly displeased if you barf anywhere but in that can," he states flatly, pointing to a little round metal bin.

"I'm not going to barf."

He leans back in his chair. "They might peg you for rich and try to hit you up for commissary but women don't fight, physically. They gossip and bitch at each other but no one's going to harm you. And there are lesbians. If that's your thing, fine, but don't get fuckin' caught. They can be real nasty. And I don't mean physically," he says, motioning over his face, "though that's true, too. I mean they get petty and jealous and possessive."

"I-I have a fiancé," I explain, totally flustered. "Peeta Mellark."

"He in the file?" I nod. "He can visit you this weekend. I'll make sure the file gets to the desk in the visiting room." I sit in the chair, awaiting more instructions. He raises a pale blond eyebrow at me. "You can go." I bite the inside of my cheek and get up, turning around to leave.

Trinket peeks her head into the office. "All finished here?" Mr. Abernathy nods at her from behind me and Trinket smiles widely at him. "Wonderful. Okay Everdeen, let's go onward with your tour." I roll my eyes at her exuberance and follow her closely. "We have to hurry because they're doing the count soon. If you're not in your bunk before the count, there is hell to pay."

Watson and the redhead end up in our small pack as well. "What's your name?" I whisper to the redhaired girl, whose sea green eyes are puffy and reddened.

"Annie," she replies softly. "I mean, um, Cresta."

I smile warmly at her. "I'm Everdeen. But you can call me Katniss."

The other girl, Watson, pipes up from my left. "I'm Rue." She's even tinier than me, I notice. God, she can't be a day over 18. I wonder what she did to get herself in this hellhole.

I grin. "So we all agree the last name thing is weird?" They both nod. "Okay, cool. Then we'll be Annie, Katniss, and Rue to each other."

Trinket clears her throat and turns around. "It's lovely that you're making friends but please pay attention." She waits for us to stop whispering and we all stand still. "Wonderful. Now, the dorms are down here," she says, motioning down a hallway. "Those are some offices up there. The dining hall is down there to the left." She leads us down a series of corridors. "The common room, that's the counselor's office."

"When will we get outfits like everyone else?" Annie inquires in a soft voice. Everything about her is so gentle and timid, I wonder how she got in here, too. I look around and notice that everyone is wearing beige except for us. Us and a few other people, I suppose, but we still stick out like sore thumbs in the bright orange jumpsuits.

Trinket shrugs. "Tomorrow after breakfast you can go down to the office to the lady and she can get you into the regular clothing, if you'd like. Trust me darling, you can't do much more with beige than you can with orange." We come to the bunks we had passed on the way in. "Everdeen, Cresta, this is you." We enter a room of four bunk beds. Five of the beds are taken by women of various ages. Four older women, one of them hooked up to an oxygen machine, and then a younger woman with blonde hair. Trinket hands us each a basket with toiletries in it. "These are for you."

I look behind her at Rue who is wide-eyed and looking around timidly and noticeably empty-handed. "What about her?"

Trinket purses her lips. "They'll take care of her." They? Who's they? I look around at the women in the bunks and it suddenly dawns on me that everyone is white. I must look disgusted because Trinket rolls her eyes at me. "Don't look at me like that, Everdeen. It's tribal, not racist." I balk at her. When Trinket moves out of the way I step one foot out of the door and take Rue by the wrist.

We lock eyes. "Hey, if they don't get you anything, I'll give you some of my stuff, okay?" I tell her in a low voice, giving her a small smile.

She mirrors my smile and nods, hurrying after Trinket who is several steps ahead of her. Annie has already settled into the bottom bunk with her basket in her hands, glancing around nervously. The woman on the other top bunk, the younger one, ruffles her hair and I can see that one side of it is shaved, with vines tattooed around her ear and down her neck.

"Everdeen, huh?" she says, her voice low and scratchy. "What's your first name?"

"Katniss."

"I'm Cressida," she says, hopping off her bunk. Her eyes are bright and blue but unlike Peeta's I feel like I can see right through them. In spite of, or maybe due to, her odd hairdo she is incredibly striking. "What are you in here for?"

My mouth opens and closes a few times. I look around to the other women for support but they don't seem perturbed. "I thought you weren't supposed I ask that. I read that - that you're not supposed to ask that."

Cressida raises an eyebrow and smirks at me. "You read about prison? What did you do, study for it?"

"Oh lay off her, Cress," the woman attached to the breathing tube says. I look at her and flash her an appreciative smile. "Cressida's only in here because she told a CO to go fuck himself."

"Deserved it," Cressida mumbles.

"It was dumb," the woman responds, rolling her eyes. "She got put in SHU. That's solitary."

"Yeah yeah," Cressida says, waving them off. "Here's the deal. They're about to do the count. When they do the count, you stand next to your bed and don't say shit, okay?" She's talking to me and Annie now. "We'll make your bed for you until you get your own bunk in the dorms."

"I can make my bed," I insist with an eye roll.

"No you fuckin' can't. We'll do it right so we don't have to do it again and we can get to dinner on time. Sleep on top of your blankets."

"What if I want to sleep in my bed?"

Cressida steps closer to me and invades my personal bubble. She sizes me up which would be threatening, but she's got a grin on her features. "Then you'll be the only person in here who does."

Another woman, a brunette with gray eyes like mine, steps forward. "Cressida, please." She looks to me. "I'm Hazelle. Look, it's just a good idea to follow these rules until you get used to everything. Once that's done," she claps her hands together, "you're on your own, okay?"

We hear a voice over the loudspeaker and everyone stands, or sits in the case of the woman with the oxygen tank, near their beds. Annie and I do the same, being as still and silent as possible. Officer Thread sticks his head into the room and clicks something in his hand to account for us. Once they're done - and they do it twice because, as Cressida put it, "They can't fuckin' count," - we head to dinner.

The meal is pretty sad - something that might pass for meat if you squint at it, some blanched vegetables and a white bread roll - and Trinket, who comes up behind me with Cressida on her heels, shakes her head when I reach for the pudding. "I wouldn't," Cressida cuts in. "The containers they come in have 'Desert Storm' written on them."

I grimace and follow them to a table where a short older woman with long, gray hair is sitting down, fiddling with her fork. She's got eyes like Annie's, who sits down next to her. "Everdeen, this is Yoga Cohen. But you can call her Mags. She runs the yoga class here."

I nod at the woman and she smiles kindly at me. She's missing a few teeth but the smile looks genuine. "How are you, Everdeen?" Her voice is old and hard to understand, not to mention a Creole accent that makes her even more undecipherable.

"Katniss, please, and I... I don't know how to answer that question, to be honest."

Mags nods her head. "You like jazz, Katniss?" My fingers reflexively grip around my fork. I never did like jazz until I met Johanna. Then everything she loved, I came to love through her. I nod my head, though. "Back in the ol' days, before recordin' an' all that, the jazz clubs would be hot. Not just with Ella and Louis, no, but greats you ain't never heard of. Know why? Because they didn't record nothin'. They made music for days, weeks, songs that were longer than any record could hold. And then at the end of the night, all that beautiful music? It was gone. Pfft, never to be heard again. Beautiful melodies that would make any man or woman weep. Masterpieces."

"This story got a point, Mags? Effie and I will be as old as you before it ends," Cressida interjects, nudging Trinket in the arm. So her name is Effie, I guess. The two of them are very close, almost intimate, as they sit together on the bench. Weird.

Mags rolls her eyes at Cressida's impatience but her smile never wavers. "Think of your time here like those jazz songs. Beautiful, but temporary. Make something meaningful as you can and then pack it away."

I nod my head in understanding. This is only temporary. This is not who I am. The thought almost relaxes me and I can nearly stomach the flavorless vegetables we're ingesting. The five of us begin to eat, with Effie and Cressida talking quietly to one another. Finally Cressida turns to me. "So, Everdeen, what's your story, huh?"

"My story?" I ask, raising my eyebrow. This entire day has been exhausting and I'm about done answering all of these women's questions. I just want to go home to my own bed and snuggle in my blanket with my caring fiancé and sleep and hope this is all a bad dream.

A tall, slim black woman with a long ponytail sits down next to Mags on her other side. "Yeah. Like uh, Sister Paylor right here. She chained herself to a flagpole near a nuclear testing site." The woman looks at me and while she doesn't say anything, I see the ghost of a smile on her lips.

"I chained myself to a drug dealer."

Both of the older women nod and Cressida rolls her eyes. "Typical. Well-bred white girl falls for the tragic backstory brunette. Am I close?"

I nod. "Just about." She's almost right fucking on point but I don't want to give too much of myself away. And, of course, talking about Johanna is painful. Not just because she's the reason I'm here. It was always too painful.

Cressida nods. "I figured. A good girl like you, she isn't here for drugs or murder. You don't have the look about you." She clears her throat and smiles smugly at me. She doesn't exactly look like a drug dealer or a murderer either, to be honest. None of these women do. But, I remind myself, a lot of them are in here for real crimes. Crimes they didn't commit just because they were in love.

"Take the wisdom of a junkie philosopher," Paylor interjects, quirking her eyebrow. "I pray for you, Cress."

"I lust after you, sister," Cressida replies, wiggling her eyebrows at the other woman.

Paylor smirks. "You should watch me do yoga with Mags."

"That whole common room smells like a fart, it kinda takes away the magic for me." Cressida turns her attention to me as Effie circles her arms around Cressida's right arm that she had on the table. "So Katniss. Kat. Kitty Kat. You like pussy, Kat, as your name would suggest?" I spit out my water and Cressida leans her head back in a laugh. "I'm getting some sapphic vibes off of you."

"Leave her alone," Sister Paylor says, shaking her head.

This just emboldens Cressida whose cheek dimples as she smirks. "Oh come on, sister. You know if you hadn't gotten hitched with Jesus, you would've gone my way."

The table erupts in laughter and I can't help but chuckle as well. Maybe this won't be so bad. None of these women seem like the vicious killers you see on television. They all seem pleasant, even Cressida who is one of the more aggressive women I've seen here.

A figure standing next to me breaks my attention from the group. Then I see her boots. I wouldn't recognize them by sight because they look like everyone else's. But as my eyes trail up her figure, it only takes me a few seconds to realize it's her. Her dazzling smile, though it's a bit uncertain. Her black hair, but there are no streaks in it now. Those brown eyes I adore.  _Adored_. Past tense. There's still a line of eyeliner underneath both her eyes. She adjusts her glasses on her face.

That voice. My heart stops. The world stops. "Hey brainless. This a bad time to say hi?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Johannas-Motivational-Insults for her superhuman beta reading abilities.
> 
> The quote is from O. Henry, "It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do."
> 
> The song lyrics are Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come."


	2. Home

_Five Years Ago_

_Didn't I make you feel like you were the only man?  
And didn't I give you nearly everything that a woman possibly can?_

One of the things I love most about being with Johanna, aside from the incredible sex, is the little routine of domesticity we’ve slipped into in after only a few months of dating. Her apartment is cozy and colorful, filled to the brim with books and records and little mementos from her trips around the world. When she's away I practically live here, devouring her books, cleaning and cooking, and cuddling into her pillow that smells of pine. When she's home, I enjoy to poke around at her things while she reads, asking her intermittently to tell me stories of the provenance of a certain picture or item. Tonight she's playing Janis Joplin while she reads Margaret Atwood in her poster bed and I'm rooting around her in drawers in my underwear and a skimpy tank top. Johanna reads voraciously; the English Lit major in me is sort of in love with that. The rest of me is sort of in love with her. I haven't told her that, just because the relationship is pretty new and I don't want to scare her off with my need to nest.

I sway my hips to the blues beat, not at all trying to distract her from her book...

Her brown eyes are watching me carefully from over the top of the novel when we finally make eye contact. Desire is plain in them and I can't help but smirk at her. In the short time we've known each other the one thing that never fails is her magnetism to me. Since the first day we met I haven't been able to keep my hands off of her, and vice versa. Her eyes burn when she looks at me, setting every inch of me on fire, just like she promised that day in the elevator. Johanna's begun to remind me of William's Blake "The Tyger" with her primal ferocity and gentle beauty, especially when she's aiming her heated glare directly into my soul.  _What the hand, dare seize the fire?_

 _I_  do.  _I_  dare. I slowly drag my hands along the bottom of my tank top, grazing my fingernails across my skin. I lift the fabric over my head and toss it on to her hardwood floors, on top of my shoes that were long forgotten after our night out. I tug on my bottom lip and lock eyes with her. She mouths 'come here' and crooks her finger toward me, placing her novel on the nightstand. A thrill shoots through my ribs and stomach and I slink toward her, trying my best to keep up my sexy strip tease in spite of my nervous anticipation of her touch. I curl a hand around the post of her bed and swing my knees on to the mattress. She crawls toward me and stands on her knees in front of my body.

"Are you going to miss me?" I ask as she leans in and lays feather-light kisses on the side of my neck, holding the other side with her hand. Her thumb grazes over my pulse and my eyes flutter closed. Her touch can be so gentle at times and it pulls the same reaction from me as it does when she takes me roughly. Pure desire, intense arousal, and a warmth that spreads from my core to my fingertips.

"Yes. Too much." Her lips move from my neck to my ear, where she traces the outer shell of my ear with the tip of her tongue. "Come with me," she husks, scratching her fingers through my hair and forcing my head to tilt back against the wood post.

"What?" I've been spoiled with Johanna's presence nearly every day for the past few weeks. She takes a lot of phone calls but hasn't left town in a bit, even though she warned me that oftentimes she would be gone for a while. I said I didn't mind, and I don't really, but I miss her touch. And her voice. And her eyes.

"You heard me, brainless. Come with me. Quit your job." Her eyes, filled with lust, are also quite serious. There's an intensity about Johanna that cannot be ignored. She commands a room; I've seen her with her associates at these party-turned-meetings she's brought me to, and she is ferocious. Johanna is frank and strong-willed, everything I wish I could be and am not. Things I couldn't allow myself to be, not at home where everyone knows me as the good girl. If she is the Tyger, I am most certainly the Lamb. A  _very_   _willing_  Lamb.

I blink a few times as she continues to kiss across my face, my lips, down my neck into my cleavage. I can barely register what she's said because of the heat of her mouth around my nipple, and her hand palming my other breast. "But I'd have to put in my notice. My two weeks."

She husks out a laugh against my skin and looks up into my eyes. "You're a fucking waitress, you don't have to give notice," she muses with a grin.

I feign innocence. "Will I get in trouble?"

Her eyes widen and she growls in the back of her throat, switching to shower attention on my other breast. "God, I hope so."

I laugh and grab her by the chin to arrest her attention. "You know what I mean."

Her hand covers mine and she pulls it away from her face and intertwines our fingers together. "You don't have to do anything," she assures me, giving me the gentlest of kisses on the lips. "You'll just be there to keep me company." After learning that Johanna's 'I work for an international drug cartel' thing wasn't a joke, I can't say I wasn't scared. But more than that, it piqued my curiosity. But that's because none of it was around me. Her friends aren't junkies or dealers; they are well-dressed charmers, like she is. Though no one's really like Johanna Mason.

"I don't know." I do know. I want to go. But I want her to beg me for it.

She grins and lets her hands trail down my breasts, down my bare stomach to the hem of my underwear. "C'mon, baby. I want you to come." Her hand dips beneath my black lace panties and right into my folds, her finger diving deep into my embarrassingly wet core. I gasp and she undulates with me, swallowing my breath into her mouth. "And I want you to  _come_."

I breathe out something that even I don't know what it is, some combination of swears and her name. "Yes," I wheeze.

"Yes?" Her eyes light up and she kisses me and curls another one of her fingers inside me. "Is that a yes?" I push her roughly back onto the bed and straddle her, leaning down to kiss her deeply. When I pull back to look her in the eyes, she's got that mix of desire, sincerity, and affection that makes my entire body sizzle like a furnace.

_Take it. Take another little piece of my heart now, baby._

"Yes."

* * *

 

_Current Day_

"Yes! Yes this is a bad fucking time!" I can't believe she's here. Those eyes, god, those eyes that I could spot in a crowd of thousands, they're looking at me and it's as if no time has passed. I'm 22 again, pinned beneath her stare,  _burning_ beneath it. It takes me a moment to orient myself and I do, standing up from the table abruptly. "Don't." I level my stare at her and muster up what little courage I have to extricate myself from her presence.

I storm toward the exit and Officer Thread steps into my way. His cold steel eyes bore down into me. "Where do you think you're going, inmate?"

"I'm finished," I explain as calmly as I can, knowing the entire reason I'm in this mess is only ten yards behind me. It's like I can feel the heat of her body from here. I know that's just my imagination, it must be. This is only temporary, this is only temporary...

"Is that right?" He hooks his thumbs into his pants and runs his tongue over his front teeth. "Dinner is over when it's over!" he barks loudly, startling me and causing a little bit of spittle to hit my face. I wipe it off my cheek with the back of my hand and glare at him.

As I turn around, he slaps my ass and I have to bite back the urge to slap him in the face. Johanna is still standing near my table, chatting with Cressida but her eyes are on me. With a shake of her head she struts away, sitting down with a different group of women, facing me but pointedly looking in a different direction. I ease myself into an empty bench near the door, anxiously awaiting dinnertime to be over. I can't see if she's now looking at me, but I can feel I'm being watched in the raised hairs on the back of my neck.

Once dinner is over, I march back to my bunk and settle on top of the scratchy, pilling black blankets they provide for us. I glue my eyes to the peeling paint on the ceiling, praying that sleep will consume me soon. In my dreams at least I can be home with Peeta, curled in his strong arms, inhaling the sweet smell of flour that he brings with him. After he's washed the ink from his newspaper job Peeta always indulges in a lot of baking, the fruits of which I enjoy as much as the smell. It leaves him smelling of yeast and chocolate, or fruits and flour, and it is comforting.

All I can smell now is antiseptic and the faint aroma of female sweat.

"So," Cressida begins as she saunters into the room. She hoists herself up on her top bunk and shifts her small body back to lean against the wall. "How'd you and your ex get put up in the same place, huh? Small world."

My eyes flutter open and I loll my head to look at her. "How did you know she was my girlfriend?"

Her cheek dimples deeply. "I know dyke drama when I see it. That's the big bad drug pusher that broke your heart. She's not as ...big or bad as I thought she'd be. I figured she'd be one of those big bull dykes."

I scrunch my nose and shake my head. No, my Johanna is equal parts masculine and feminine, sultry and beautiful. Well, not  _my_ Johanna, I remind myself. That hasn't been my Johanna in years. "That's her," I reply drolly.

"That your type?" Cressida presses, raising her eyebrow. "That skinny Bettie Page kinda lesbian?"

A laugh escapes my lips before I can stop it and I roll my eyes. "I don't have a type. I like people. Hot people. Interesting people."

"You bi girls always confuse me. I honestly don't know how you go from licking pussy to sucking dick. It's like going from eating meat to being a vegetarian."

"Shouldn't that metaphor work the opposite way?" I question, smirking at her.

She shakes her head. "Not at all. Meat tastes better than vegetables. Pussy tastes better than dick. Not that I've got any experience to go on. Just from what others have told me." I finally let out a long laugh, feeling slightly better than I did when I laid down. "I mean, eating pussy's like getting to have a perfectly cooked steak dinner with all the trimmings. Sucking dick's like ...I don't know, eating a celery stick or some shit. A celery stick with a bunch of salt on it." Effie walks in the room at the end of her sentence and Cressida looks over at her. "You tell me, Trinket, what's better? Eating pussy or sucking dick?"

Effie eyes me in my bunk and under her make-up I can see her blushing. "Cressida, why do you have to ask these things?"

"I'm a curious person!" she defends, putting her hands up. "I'm not about to go blow some dudes to find out. Plus there's no man meat in here anyway. So I have to rely on those who've done both." Effie scoots up and sits next to Cressida, who puts her arm around her. "Now tell me, what's better?"

She sighs and runs her fingers through her blonde hair, giving Cressida an exasperated but affectionate look. "It's different."

"Yeah," I agree with a nod. "I mean, part of it's the same. Giving that person pleasure, watching them lose control. Hearing the noises they make. With a girl, it's more of a..." I trail off, but both women are looking at me expectantly. Sex talk is not my forte. And the only woman I've ever had sex with makes me want to punch myself in the face. I blush and look away from them. "I don't know."

"It's more intimate," Effie supplies. Cressida raises both eyebrows. "With a girl you're really in there, you know?"

"I guess," I reply indifferently. "For me, it's always been about the person. Making that person come, giving all that I can to watch their eyes roll back. Boy or girl, it doesn't matter. As long as you love that person, the sex can be great."

Cressida eyes me, but settles for that information with a nod. "So neither one of you is gonna cop and confess what tastes better?"

"Oh women, definitely," Effie states. "Men are very salty. I don't like that much sodium. It's not good for you." The matter-of-fact way she states this makes me laugh even harder than before, and it's not long before Cressida joins in.

"So the sex is better with women," she states, looking between the two of us for confirmation.

I shrug my shoulders and turn to face the ceiling again. "The sex is better with someone you love."

_Four Years Ago_

The breeze is blowing through the open shutters, ruffling Johanna's hair as she stares at me. I can smell the sweet scent of exotic trees and the salty scent of seawater coming in, circling around our slothful ceiling fan. Her hair is disheveled, a small portion of her eyeshadow smudged from our recent activities. Bali has been almost all play and no work for Johanna, giving us some uninterrupted time together that has been extremely precious since we starting dating almost a full year ago.

Her wetness is slowly dripping down my chin as I look up at her from the blankets. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and level my eyes at her. I'm trying to discern what emotions are in her eyes. Fear, affection, still a lot of desire from my having just made her come. The reason I'm looking up at her and not still lapping at her folds is, as she came, she breathlessly whispered, "I love you."

She's never said it to me before. I blink in confusion. "You - you what?"

"I love you," she repeats, a little firmer this time. Her hand releases the sheet she was gripping and runs her fingers through my hair. Some of my hair is stuck to my face and she chuckles as she pulls it away. Her lightened expression slowly falls as she stares into my eyes. "I don't say that to everyone. Or, anyone, really. You have to say it back now."

The corner of my mouth turns upward as I crawl forward and lean down, kissing her sweetly on the lips. "I love you too, Johanna." And I really do. I'm not sure when that happened, but somewhere in our bizarre romance over the past year, I fell in love with her. I've never been in love before, but I don't think this is some first love passing fancy. The way I love her, it isn't obsessive or urgent. It's slow and deep. It feels inevitable. Maybe that's how you know you've really fallen in love, because you're so cocooned in the other person you never felt the fall at all. But somehow, you landed in their arms and it feels like you were there all along.

Every time Johanna looks at me she looks like she's going to consume me, and this time is no different. With her athletic prowess she reverses our positions and pins me beneath her. Her eyes rake over my body hungrily, but when her brown eyes meet mine, I find them surprisingly soft. They don't lose their softness, even as she drags her fingers down my body to my center, rubbing me in slow movements. Her intense eye contact only relents as she bends to kiss me every so often.

"Say you love me again," she demands against my lips, picking up her pace and rapidly bringing me toward my fourth orgasm of the evening. Well, the mid-afternoon, I surmise by the slant of the sun over the ocean.

I smile against her kiss. "I love you." My hands that have been digging into her spine move upward to rake through her hair, holding her temples between my hands. "I love you, Johanna Mason."

Her eyes brighten and my heart swells to think that I put that light there. We're not like this, sentimental and mushy, but it's a side of Johanna I've never seen and it's thrilling. There's a heat and intensity to her movements that seem different than before. I try to pin the exact difference as my brain begins to short circuit in the beginnings of orgasm.

Piety. That's the word. It's almost pious the way she's gazing into my eyes and moving her fingers around the slick heat of my pussy. She's lost in me, and I in her. My climax is cresting as she seizes my lips in a desperate kiss and brings me over the edge once more, shaking and trembling against her body. She folds on to her side, but her hand never leaves its place between my legs. "This is my home now," Johanna jokes in a husky voice, patting my vagina.

"Oh?" I giggle and pull her closer to me, allowing her to continue her soft movements against my folds as she cuddles into me. I'm very okay with that being Johanna's home, because here, in her arms, no matter what the longitude and latitude of the planet we're on, is my home, too.

* * *

 

_Current Day_

"Welcome to Panem Correctional Institute." Officer Thread stands in the front of the common room, pacing in front of me and the few other inmates who started the same time. Rue, Annie, and a handful of others that I don't recognize.  _She_ is also in the room, and patted the seat next to her in invitation to me when I arrived, but I chose to sit as far away from her as I could. "This is the Federal Department of Corrections where we strive to maintain facilities that are secure, sanitary, and safe. This," he picks up a pipe from the desk in front of him, "is a copper pipe. It was used to break two ribs." I can hear the soft gasp from Annie sitting next to me and I have to hide my smile. "That person is now in SHU. That means solitary. You do not want to go there. You also do not want to get hit with a copper pipe. Those women's lives are basically over. You'll get your uniforms next week. State your correct size. No baggy hip-hop pants." He directs his cold eyes at Rue. "Yes, I'm talking to you."

I raise my hand. Thread levels his gaze at me. "I, um, I was told that we could get out new uniforms today."

"You were told wrong," he replies snidely. "There's a shortage at the moment. Wait time is a week."

Once he's ended his spiel the nurse that reminds me of my mom enters the room to talk to us about hygiene and our psyches. "Suicidal thoughts will come," she assures us. "They'll say 'do it.' 'End it.' And you'll want to." She lets the sentence hang off there and I have to stifle my giggle into my hand. At least she's honest.

Another officer tells us about our bunk assignments, that we'll be getting them next week, as well as the beige uniforms instead of our orange. Johanna's already in beige, contrasting against her black hair, and I wonder what she looked like in orange. Like a jack-o-lantern, I think to myself. Or like the Tyger. A tall, well-dressed woman with gray eyes and a curtain of gray hair clicks into the room on expensive heels. "I'm Alma Coin, the executive assistant to the warden. If you have any questions or concerns, especially regarding your needs as women, do not hesitate to come to me. I will handle you personally." Her smile is warm, but not in a genuine way. More like the forced heat out of an old radiator.

"I bet she will," I hear Johanna drawl from her seat, and I can practically see her little raised eyebrow, that dangling-her-glasses-in-her-teeth look she puts on when she's intentionally being seductive. Though her bedroom eyes never failed to work with me, I was always more easily seduced by her when she wasn't trying so hard.

Coin leaves the room before any of us can ask a question, and I quickly follow suit so I'm not stuck in the room with Johanna. I don't want to be anywhere near her, for reasons that go beyond my immediate anger. Reasons I don't want to think about. Tomorrow is visiting day and I'm certain Peeta is going to come visit me so I try and focus on that.

When I get to the bathroom there are two women waiting in line for the three stalls, two of which don't even have doors on them. Considering the blowjob they gave us in orientation about sanitation and safety, this place has an egregious lack of both. I'm certainly not going to pee in front of these women, so I let someone go before me as I wait for the closed-door stall.

There's a tall, slim black woman in front of the mirror, applying a thin layer of gold-flecked eyeliner to her eyes. She's got a perfectly coiffed black afro and slim, defined muscles that I can see through her robe. She's striking really, with both her beauty and her height. She turns to me and catches me staring, but unlike everyone else here, she offers me a genuine smile. "Honey if you're waiting for the one with the door, you've got a long day ahead of you."

Someone is swearing or maybe just speaking loudly in Spanish in the stall with the door. Whatever she's saying she sounds extremely angry. "How long has she been in there?"

The woman shrugs. "Long enough. You oughta just use the other one." She smiles again. "This is home now, no need to be shy."

This is not even close to home. Home is warm arms, a warm bed. "Not for me," I reply, looking down at the atrocious pink tile they've laid out in this room. No, my bathroom has wonderful white tile and a claw-foot tub that fits me and my wonderful fiance perfectly.

"Not yet," she informs sagely, turning to face me. It's only then that I realize she's transgender, from the small protrustion of an Adam's apple in her sleek neck. It's irrelevant, really, but I'm sort of glad to see the justice system at least put her in the right prison. "I'm Katniss. Er, Everdeen." I walk over and extend my hand to her.

She shakes it, having the softest skin I've felt in a while. "Cinna. Burset, technically, but I prefer Cinna." Her brown eyes scrutinize me for a second, eyeing me up and down. "You should stop by my salon. If you want something done with your hair, or some fresh make-up." Her eyes travel down to my sad excuse for sandals that I fashioned out of duct tape after Hazelle told me of the rampant fungus in the showers a few days ago. "Oh honey. Get some from commissary. But the metallic look  _is_  in this season."

The screaming Spanish girl finally emerges from her stall and I manage a quick thank you to Cinna before going into the stall and locking the door. It feels like the only privacy I've had in months, though it's only been a handful of days. Long days of dodging both Johanna and the come-ons from some really butch women, and having every moment of my waking hours watched by someone - I'm about ready to snap. As I relieve myself physically, I relieve myself emotionally by reminding myself that Peeta will be seeing me soon. I can look into his blue eyes and count down the days until I can see him again.

But no matter how hard I try to picture those blue eyes, they get shrouded in darkness and morphed into brown.

* * *

 

When Peeta walks in the door and gets to my table, I immediately take him into a fierce hug. He pulls away and kisses me squarely on the lips, and the officer in charge barks at us. There's a strict rule about short hugs and no kissing - something about it being inappropriate and possibly exchanging drugs that way - so we break apart before I'm ready. I don't want to let him go. Just being in his arms has given me a relief I haven't felt in days.

"So," Peeta begins, clasping his hands in front of him as we sit down. "You look good."

I roll my eyes. "No I don't. Don't lie to me, you're a terrible liar."

"I'm an excellent liar, thank you very much. And you do look good, considering." He gestures around at our surroundings. Other women are talking with their family members or significant others, all of them stuck behind bars like me. "How are they treating you?"

I shrug my shoulders. "Fine. I really don't want to talk about here. Let's talk about what you're doing. How's work? How's Madge and the baby?"

"All of those things are fine," he assures me, taking my hand in his. The contact feels nice. I didn't think I would miss the physical contact of another person so much, but I do. There was almost no time in between my leaving Johanna and meeting Peeta, so I haven't had an extended period of time with no one to hold me. "Madge is about ready to pop. Gale said the doctor thinks she might have it early."

"Does that means she won't visit me?" I ask, selfishly. I want to see her before she has the baby and then won't come see me for a while. I want normalcy.

Peeta smiles kindly at me. "She said she will. She figured I should come alone first. She's coming next week with Gale. Your mother wants to visit you, too. And Prim."

"Oh god," I groan, "don't let her bring Prim here. I don't want her to see me looking like this." My bright orange outfit, my terrible hair, my splotchy skin. I don't want her to see her big sister as some kind of convict. Prim has always looked up to me, for better or worse, and this is really worse than I want.

He laughs congenially. "You know she'll want to come. Besides, it'll be good. Let you have some normal conversations. And you'll need someone to run interference between you and your mother."

I'm bursting with the desire to tell Peeta that Johanna is here. He's always been my confidant and it feels wrong somehow to not tell him. Then, inexplicably, I reason with myself that I deserve to have this secret. I'm overcome with the feeling that this is somehow mine. When I come back into the conversation, Peeta is staring at me expectantly. "Hm?"

"I said, my parents are considering selling the bakery, and I'm considering buying it from them." He's gauging my reaction carefully. He's always so considerate of my feelings, wanting my opinion on things. Even when he writes his pieces for the newspaper, he wants me to go through them first. I can tell he's hopeful that I'll approve.

"That's great," I say finally, smiling as widely as my chapped lips will allow. "I think that's a great idea." Peeta's a decent writer, but he's an excellent baker and a pretty good painter. His parents wanted him to branch out and be successful, but I guess now they want to give him the family business. "What about Toph?"

Toph is Peeta's eldest brother and a real pain in the ass. He's an overly-muscled meathead who their parents desperately tried to turn into someone who could take their business from them when they retired. Unfortunately he has no interest in business and no skill for the delicate art of baking. Peeta does. "He's taking some sabbatical to California. Going to try his hand at professional surfing."

Surfing in California seems like a lot more fun than waking up at 3am to bake in a stuffy Brooklyn bakery, but to each their own. And I'm glad he'll be far away from Peeta. They don't get along and I've never liked how his brothers bully him. "Well, I think it's great, Peeta, really. If that's what you want to do, I support you."

"Really?" He leans over to kiss me, but halfway there realizes where we are, and sits back down in his seat. "Thank you, Katniss. I'm not going to quit, not right away. I have to make sure I have the money, take some time learning their business from them. But by the time you get out, we'll both be business owners."

By the time I get out. Madge's kid'll be 14 months, hopefully our business will have reopened, Peeta will be running his bakery. Everyone will have their lives sorted except for me. "And there will be like two new iPhones," I add with a cheeky grin.

"And the Apple Watch." He expels a short sigh and looks down at the table between us. His fingers lightly rub the tabletop. "I miss you. I know it's only been a few days, but I miss you."

"I miss you too."

When we say our goodbyes, it's painful. I can tell he's holding back tears, but I'm glad he didn't cry. I don't need some loudmouth in this room to tell everyone my fiance's a big time crier. There can be no weakness in here. There's no one in here I can trust, just me. They might be likable, these women, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't take advantage of me if the opportunity arose. Hunt or be hunted. My plan is to just keep a low profile, read a bunch of books, and hope that the next 15 months go by quickly. But I know that I have to watch my back and that down the road, I might have to do some things I'm not proud of. Sometimes, certain circumstances require us to be people we know that we are not. Whether that's just a facet of our personalities we don't have to use, or we embody someone else all together, I don't know. But I know that I am capable of it. I'm capable of a lot of things that surprise even me.

* * *

 

_Five Years Ago_

"No, Johanna."

"Katniss, don't be such a baby. I'm asking you to do one thing. Have I asked you for anything in these past ten months?" Johanna stands firmly, her hands on her hips. She pulls her glasses up on top of her head, and that's how I know she's being real with me. When she gets intense or honest, she sticks her glasses in her hair. She knows it's a tell, though, and I think she's caught on that I've caught on. "It's not a big deal."

"It's an incredibly big deal!" I yell back at her, tossing my arms in the air. I pace around her bedroom, my hand on my forehead. She's right in one respect - for the last ten months she hasn't asked me to do anything involving her business. Even when she's taken me on the trips with her, I've been kept away from everyone else.

But now she's asking me to smuggle a suitcase full of money through an international airport. "I wouldn't ask you if I had anyone else. Everyone's all tied up." Her eyes drop to the ground. "My usual guy  _might_ be in jail, but not for this," she quickly adds, looking me in the eye. "Katniss, please."

I sigh. As I look into her eyes, I find them infuriatingly sincere. She really is desperate. I want to believe that if she had any way of getting around this, she would. "What would I have to do?"

Her eyes light up and I give her a warning look, and her hopefulness subsides a little. "All you have to do is take a plane to Berlin. I will meet you at the airport, and we will leave. You'll check one bag, pick it up, and boom. Done. Then I'll take you to the Fernsehturm and we'll have a big, romantic dinner. And the rest of the week to ourselves in Germany."

A week alone with Johanna in Germany sounds amazing. I don't care where she takes me, to be honest, but I'm intrigued by a week with her. I've never been to Germany before, either. "That's all I have to do? What are the chances I'll get caught?"

"Very low," Johanna assures me. "Honestly, if this was high risk, I would just say fuck it. But it's low risk and I have no one else I trust to do this." She takes both of my hands in hers and squeezes them tightly. "I'll set you up with a fake name, passport, everything. You don't even need a carry-on, I'll take care of everything when you get there."

The nervousness I had bubbling in my stomach becomes a sort of thrill of anticipation. "Okay," I agree slowly with a nod of my head. "I'll do it. Just this once, Johanna, I swear to God. Do not ask me this again."

She throws her arms around my shoulders and reaches up on her toes a little to kiss me. "Thank you," she murmurs against my lips. "I have to make some phone calls but I promise I will thank you for this later." She presses a hard kiss to me once again before picking up her cell phone to make her litany of calls.

_A Few Days Later…_

It's official: I'm panicking. I got on the flight Johanna arranged for me with no problem. My bag was checked and put aboard, as far as I know, and we landed about ten minutes ago. Everyone else on my flight has gotten their bag, except for me. I'm in this terrible wig Johanna fashioned for me, and a business suit that doesn't quite fit, and I'm freaking out in an unfamiliar airport in a foreign country.

Finally I find a baggage handler and I grab his arm. "Excuse me, I can't find my bag," I plead desperately.

His face scrunches in confusion. "Entschuldigung?"

Of course, he doesn't speak English. "My bag?" I make the shape of a suitcase, and then pantomime putting it on the ground and rolling it away. I try to remember the German flash words I studied on the ride over here. "Oh! Meine tasche! Um... um, Koffer?"

The man nods. "Oh, your suitcase," he repeats, in English. I sigh in exasperation. "Sometimes they take a while, or they get directed on to other flights. You'll have to check with the airline. Sorry, ma'am."

For another few anxious minutes I wait near the carousel, when finally I see it. My bag! "My bag!" I say aloud, in such joy that the man looks over at me. "Meine tasche! Danke!" I yank the stupid gray rolling bag off the carousel and begin stalking toward the exit. Johanna emerges from out of nowhere and takes me by the shoulders. "Johanna!" I'm so relieved to see her I can feel tears spring to my eyes. "I thought I lost the bag!"

"Good thing you didn't. Snow would've had you killed." Coriolanus Snow or "Cory" as Johanna sometimes calls him, is the old man that's the kingpin of her drug cartel. I've never met him, not even close to it, but Johanna doesn't speak too highly of him. I think she respects his talent as a businessman, but abhors him otherwise. But I believe she's not kidding about having me killed.

"I skipped customs," I confide in her, whispering as we go toward the exit and Johanna's waiting taxi.

"You what?" she asks, her eyes wide. She stops dead in her tracks and pivots on her heels to look at me.

"I got freaked out and skipped customs."

Johanna's worried expression gives way to a huge grin and she takes my face in her hands and kisses me. "Oh my god, forget the fucking Fernsehturm, I'm gonna eat  _you_  for dinner."

I roll my eyes, but I mirror her grin anyway. I can't believe I got away with this. I'm hoping the adrenaline doesn't wear off for a while, because I know that the anxiety inside me is going to bubble up any second now and I'll probably barf. I don't want to get in trouble. But I am pleased to see Johanna so happy. "For what I just did? You better take me to the damn restaurant  _and_ eat me for dinner."

She takes the suitcase in her hand and wraps her free arm around my waist. "You got it, baby."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Johannas-Motivational-Insults for her beta read. :)


	3. Change

_Four Years Ago..._

"Please stop," Johanna's voice rises from underneath the blankets. She peeks out, tufts of black hair and a pair of brown eyes peering at me. "I never should've shown you this."

The photo album I picked out from her bookshelf is splayed on my lap on top of the blanket. Various photos of Johanna and her mother, or just Johanna, are stuck to every page. She was a super cute little kid. "But you were so cute!" I squeal, pointing at a photo of a little Johanna in giant glasses.

She sits up and lets the blanket fall into her lap, exposing her breasts and stomach to the chill of the air conditioner. I tear my eyes away from her body back to the photos. "I was not. I was a fucking nerd."

I roll my eyes. "Just because you wore glasses, that doesn't make you a nerd. You were adorable." I flip the page to find a picture of Johanna in a pair of worn jeans and a Wonder Woman t-shirt, riding her bicycle toward the camera. Her big grin is missing her two front teeth, but she couldn't be happier.

"The glasses didn't make me a nerd, brainless. The 'being obsessed with comic books - before the superhero craze - and Star Wars' is what made me a nerd. The 'reading Jane Austen during lunch' is what made me a nerd. The 'very consuming Buffy obsession' made me a nerd."

"Did other kids pick on you?" I tease, but the expression on her face is far from pleased. It didn't occur to me that kids actually might have picked on her. I suddenly feel very protective and defensive of baby Johanna. "I can't even believe this is the same person." The next page reveals a teenaged Johanna, looking slightly more like the Johanna I know. A leather jacket, heavy eyeliner, a pair of ripped up jeans, scuffed up Doc Martens, looking into the camera with disdain.

"That's because I'm not the same person," she mumbles, rubbing her face with her hands. "Can you please just stop looking through all of those?" She snatches the album from me and slaps it closed, tossing it on the floor.

I cock my eyebrow. "Okay."

She sighs. "It's just... those are not all happy memories. Sure, I smiled in photos but like, we struggled, you know? My mom and I? My dad bailed when I was only five, and it was just me and her." With one hand holding the blanket over my chest, I use the other to rub her bare back. "All my stuff was second-hand from the thrift store. And this was before that was cool." Her fingers twist the blanket in her lap. "I got picked on a lot."

"You were bullied?" I ask, genuinely surprised. I sort of figured Johanna had been a bully. She certainly can be mean.

She nods. "Yeah, all through grammar school and middle school. Right up until I hit puberty. Then people noticed me, but I didn't give a fuck. All those pricks were so mean to me. Calling me names and trying to get my clothes dirty to see if I'd show up in dirty clothes the next day. Sometimes they'd take my books from me and tear out the ending pages so I wouldn't know what happened. Which was fucked up, you know? Because some of those books I bought with my own money since our town library was shit."

"Baby," I coo, kissing her on the temple.

"Since my dad disappeared on us, we didn't get any child support. My mom had to work four jobs just to keep us afloat and make sure the state didn't take me away. We barely afforded our rent, and it was just a crappy one bedroom apartment on the shit side of town." She rubs her nose with the back of her hand. "We had to buy food with food stamps at the grocery store, so I couldn't afford to replace the books they ruined." Her voice trails off and she blinks back a few tears. I'm overwhelmed with the need to comfort her, and anger toward her childhood bullies. It also explains why Johanna's such a hoarder with books now. "It was just tough. When I was 14, I got a job at the grocery store to help support us. Which, incidentally, was one of the places my mom worked. But you can imagine how kind the kids were to me when I'd be on shifts with my mom," she scoffs. "Riding in our rusted out station wagon with the broken windows to our minimum wage paying jobs, it was great."

I pout, scratching my nails through Johanna's hair. "I'm so sorry, baby. Kids are cruel."

"Not just kids, unfortunately." I raise my eyebrow and she leans back over the bed, retrieving the photo album from the floor. She flips through a few pages until she gets to one of her as a teenager, lanky and dressed like a punk, with a girl about four or five inches taller than her, also kind of punk. "That's Angie. She was my first girlfriend."

"She's, um," I stutter, peering at the photo. "Interesting." I don't mention how exponentially better Johanna's taste has gotten.

Johanna rolls her eyes. "She was a dick. We met over one summer before sophomore year. Spent the whole summer together. She was my first."

"So you've said."

"No, brainless," she chides, "my  _first_. As in, she took my virginity." My gaze drops down to the bed. There's a possessive side of me that I didn't know existed until I met Johanna, and it rears its ugly head often. Especially when Johanna talks about the women who've come before me. "You never forget your first."

My lips curl up in a half-smile at that. Johanna doesn't know it, but she was my first. That night in the hotel was the first time anyone other than my mother or the doctor had seen me naked. And I certainly hadn't been with another woman before. But I'm a quick study and I don't think Johanna noticed. If she did, she's never mentioned it.

"And then that following year at school, she pretended like I was nothing. It would've been one thing if she had just pretended not to know me. Make it clean, you know? But no. She went out of her way to pick on me and make my high school life hell. Not letting me sit with her at lunch. Writing 'dyke' on my locker in spray paint. Spreading rumors about me to the other kids."

"Jesus," I say, shaking my head. I can't imagine how hard it must've been to not only be gay in high school, but out and picked on. Especially by someone you trusted.

"Anyway, I got teased a lot. And the pimply-faced fuck who was the manager at my job, some 23-year-old neckbeard, tried to get me to blow him a few days after I turned 17. Said he'd give me a raise." Johanna chuckles with cold detachment. "Told me he wanted to know if I was as good as my mom." Her eyes darken. "Needless to say, I quit after I punched him in his mouth so hard a few of his teeth fell out. I got arrested and when I was in jail, I met Snow, who was bailing out some dealer-turned-junkie. And the rest, as they say, is history."

I raise an eyebrow. "You dealt drugs at 17?"

"I don't deal drugs, Katniss, I move drugs. It's very different. And I started small, working under him and learning the trade." She whistles. "I'm really fucking good at it."

"Do you ever regret it?" I ask, laying back down on my side to face her. She leans back against her headboard and mulls that over. Being with Johanna has made me narrow in on one of life's little eccentricities. By accident of circumstance, my own happiness is tethered to someone else's. This random human being, this pile of molecules, has the power to make me miserable or immeasurably happy. Love is weird. And loving Johanna means being party to her dangerous world of drug smuggling, and nursing the desire to whisk her from it, but knowing that it's as much a part of her as anything else.

"I used to," she replies after a few beats of silence. "But you know what? When I was 21, I bought my mother a house and a brand new car. She hasn't worked a day in years. We used to eat ramen for dinner - on the nights we could afford to eat at all - and now she has a personal chef that creates her meals fresh every day. So I don't regret it, not anymore. Besides." She slinks down underneath the blanket and wraps her arms around me. "It led to me meeting you, didn't it?" I grin proudly. "Plus all the other hot chicks I've slept with. Can't complain there."

"Asshole," I admonish and place a kiss on her forehead. "If it matters, I would've been friends with young Johanna."

She scoffs as she trails her lips down my neck and into the crook of my shoulder, where she nuzzles into me like a cat. "Please. We could never have been friends, Kat. We're not even friends now." I blink a few times in surprise. She grins against my skin and shakes her head, flicking her tongue like a snake against a ticklish spot I have above my collarbone. "No. I adore you. And I love having sex with you. What we have is nowhere near a friendship."

"Oh," I reply, unable to hide the disappointment in my voice.

Johanna quirks her eyebrow at me. "You think I let my friends sleep over in my apartment? Do you think I bring my friends on vacation with me?" I shudder as her free hand ghosts over my breast, sneaking underneath the blanket. She places kisses up my neck to my ear, purring in it. "Do you think I let my friends ride my face until their cum drips down my neck and they scream my name so loud the upstairs neighbors bang on the floor?"

I duck my head in embarrassment and arousal as Johanna rakes her fingernails up the inside of my thigh. "Your upstairs neighbors are dicks," I rasp.

"Mhm," she hums in agreement. "Let's piss them off again."

* * *

_Current Day_

"Congratulations, Katniss!" Effie announces at the doorway to my shared space. Cressida's got her headphones on but she looks up and winks at Effie anyway. "You're getting your new bunk assignment today!"

This piques Cressida's interest and she pulls her headphones around her neck. "When am I getting mine, Trinket?"

"Tomorrow," Effie informs curtly. She moves her blue gaze to me. "I'll show you your new bunk in Block C, then you can go down to the laundry room to get your new uniform."

"Block C, huh?" Cressida asks after she watches Effie's ass exit the room. "Good luck," she says ominously. She whistles the banjo tune from "Deliverance" as I grab my pillow and my bucket of stuff and leave the room. The prison here has three blocks: A, B, and C. I don't know much about the differences, if there are any, other than the bathroom for Block C is under renovation and everyone has been sharing the other two, with little success.

Block C doesn't seem so bad as I plop my stuff down on my bed. My bunkmate isn't here, but I see a little picture of Jesus pinned on her wall, as well as a rosary draped across her chair. So she's religious. That's cool, I think. Maybe she'll be meek and quiet, or wise and funny like Sister Paylor. Effie doesn't say anything one way or another, just makes vague throat noises of displeasure as one of the girls walks by and ogles her. I leave my things on my bed and traverse the short trip to the laundry room, where my stomach twists into a pretzel upon seeing the raven-haired girl folding a towel behind the table.

She looks up at me and gives me a little smug half-smile. "Six and a half, right?"

My jaw clenches so hard I think my teeth are going to shatter in my mouth. I'm sure what constitutes as dentistry here is probably terrible so I try to relax. "Seven, actually."

Johanna snorts and retrieves a pair of shoes for me. "Did your feet swell when you went back to boys?"

I snatch the shoes from her. "Fuck you." Her eyes roll at me and I turn around, unable to think of anything else to say, and certainly not wanting to hear her voice again. The anger I thought I had driven deep within me erupts to the surface immediately. With a shake of my head I retreat to my bunk and change into my new beige outfit.

There's some free time for us outside so I take to the track in the exercise yard. No one else is on it, save for a few older women walking around, so I'm free to clear my brain and get back into something familiar: running. I used to love to run around our Brooklyn neighborhood in the morning. I'd try to get Peeta to join me but he was more into lifting weights than cardio. I never minded, though, because I liked having time to myself.

After about four or five laps on the neglected track outside I realize I have a partner. A girl, just a tad younger than me, is running a few steps behind me. She's not exactly in shape and I can hear how winded she is even from in front of her. I slow down my pace until it's leisurely, and she catches up with me. Her cherubic cheeks are bright red from both the chill of autumn and the exertion; her blonde curls are bouncing on her shoulders. She's got bright blue eyes like Peeta, and extremely pale skin.

"I'm Delly," she introduces, extending her hand out to me when I stop for a moment to catch my breath. I shake her hand and she grins at me. "You're Everdeen, right? Katniss?"

I nod my head. "I prefer Katniss."

"Me too. I mean, not Katniss," she quickly and needlessly clarifies, "but Delly. Or Dell. But not like Farmer in the Dell or Dude You're Getting A Dell." Off my quizzical stare she puts her hand over her mouth. She removes it and wrings her hands in front of her. "Sorry, I tend to ramble when I'm nervous."

"Why are you nervous?" I ask, though honestly, I don't really care. I'm not in prison to make friends. I can barely make friends outside of prison.

"You, silly," she says with a gentle squeeze of my arm. My eyes narrow and she looks at me like I'm missing the point. "I've been watching you, you know, since you got here." Her teeth take in her bottom lip and she chews on it nervously. "I saw how nice you were to Watson, and I saw what happened with Mason." Great. I wipe my forehead with my sleeve and she watches me with interest. "Mason's tough. She didn't get here much before you did, but she doesn't take any shit from anyone." That's Johanna, I think. Even in prison she can't manage to put her tail between her legs. "I didn't know you guys knew each other."

"Small world," I muse, stretching down to my toes. I guess this is my cool down time now, since Delly seems hell-bent on talking to me. There's no point in delving into my past with Johanna to anyone, it's irrelevant to everything except how I got here.

"I see you have a tattoo," she notes, rubbing the back of her own neck.

"It's a mockingjay," I tell her, absent-mindedly stroking it. It hurt like a bitch when I got it, but it's not something I regret.

"That's cool, that's cool, Mockingjay. Anyway, it was nice meeting you, Katniss. I hope we can talk again. I think we'd be great friends, you and I," she gushes, all at once, and I have to stop myself from saying something rude. This girl seems nice enough, if a little intense. Her eyes swim away, and then quickly snap back when I speak. She appears harmless though, even if she is a little crazy.

"Cool. I'll see you around, Delly." I don't wait for her to respond, but I can hear her rambling something behind me as I jog back inside the prison's walls. When I get back to my bunk, Cressida is waiting for me on my bed. She's filing through my pictures and grins as she looks up at me. "Can I help you?"

"Not really. Just lookin' through your digs." She pinches a picture between her fingers and shows it to me. "This your betrothed?" It's a picture of Peeta and me at the beach, taken just before my incarceration.

"Yes, that's Peeta." I snatch the photos from her and tuck them back inside one of my books.

Her blonde eyebrow raises to her hairline. "Pita? Like the bread?"

"P-e-e-t-a," I spell out for her, shrugging my shoulders. "But his parents are bakers." It hadn't occurred to me that they named him after the bread. It does seem silly, now that I'm saying it aloud. Might as well have named him Tortilla or Whole Grain Loaf. "What are you doing here, anyway? Don't you have to go to church?"

I figured out Effie and Cressida's little code language very early. 'Go to church' is their little code for fucking in the chapel. I'm still surprised that Effie partakes in the lesbian sex, but I have to constantly remind myself that I am no different than anyone else here. Maybe they are bi or gay outside of jail, too. Or maybe they just crave human affection. That I can certainly understand. I used to be a loner, but being with Johanna awakened my sexual need for another person, and being with Peeta awakened my emotional need for another person. In this place, you have to grab the comfort where you can get it.

Cressida smirks at me knowingly. "Effie's doing her rounds, unfortunately. No time for proper worship." Her dimpled smirk goes even deeper. "Why, Everdeen?" She waggles her eyebrows. "You wanna pray with me?"

Well, maybe other people need that comfort, but I can resist. "You just looked at the happy photos of my fiancée and me," I snap at her, but without real malice. "Plus, I'm not a religious person," I smirk.

Cressida chuckles as she stands, looking at someone over my shoulder. She stops next to me, leaning into my ear. "Prison can change a girl, Everdeen." She calls over my shoulder, "Turns sinners into saints, isn't that right, Clovey baby?" I jerk my head to see a girl walking toward us. She's got shoulder-length black hair swept up into a messy ponytail underneath the hood of an old, slightly oversized sweatshirt over her beige uniform, and, as she snarls at Cressida, I can see some fucked up teeth.

"Get lost," the girl says to Cressida. "Ain't nobody gonna turn you into a saint. You sinned too much." Cressida holds her hand over her heart as if she's in pain.

"That's why I gotta keep going to church," she winks as she saunters away, swaying her hips back and forth. The other girl plants herself on her bed, narrowing her eyes at me. She's a little mousey, with twitchy black eyes and black hair that juts out in long spikes around her face.

"Who are you?"

"Everdeen," I state. "Katniss."

Her tiny face twitches as she gets up off her bed. "I'm Clove, Katniss. Lucky for you, I don't got too many rules. Some of these other bitches, they got tons of rules. As long as you let me have time for prayer and keep your shit to yourself, we'll be fine."

That doesn't seem too bad. I see she's got a bunch of weird pictures of Jesus everywhere, as well as that rosary and a bible next to her bed. Her slight Southern accent might peg her as a Christian nut anyway. None of that is really a deal breaker for me, as long as she leaves me alone. "Sounds like a deal."

I settle into my bed and pick up the book I took out from the library a few days ago. We sit there in silence for a while, but I can feel her big brown eyes burning into me. "Katniss?"

I look over at her. "Yeah?"

"You a homosexual, Katniss?" Her voice has lowered to a whisper, as if this is some great secret. I eye the picture of Jesus above her head. I guess maybe to her, it is.

My eyes widen in alarm. "Am I homosexual?"

She shrugs. "I heard some rumors, is all. About you and Mason."

Of course she did. Nobody can keep her fucking mouth shut here. I doubt it was Cressida, though. She may be a junkie but it seems like she's on the up and up. "I have a fiancée," I reply. "His name is Peeta Mellark. We're getting married a little after I get out."

This seems to quell her witch hunt for a moment. "So you're not gay."

"No, I'm not." I'm bisexual, I want to tell her, but for the sake of my sanity I leave that out. Besides, what does it matter? I'm with Peeta. My sexuality does not define me.

She nods. "Okay. The girls and I, we'll keep an eye out for you. The lezzies here can be pretty aggressive," she warns. "But we cool," she gestures between us, "so we'll have your back."

I'm not sure what that means but if she isn't going to try to exorcise the gay out of me, I'm all for it. Especially if it entails me getting more sleep. Plus, maybe having this Christian crusader on my side means that Johanna will steer clear of me. Any distance I can put between us is for the best.

* * *

Clove's circle of friends include two dumb blondes named Glimmer and Cashmere, which may sound like stripper names, but they're in here for drug use, not stripping, as they are quick to tell me. I have my suspicions, though, that Cashmere might've done some hooking on the side. For the next few days, as I am orientated with my new job in the electrical department and get into some routine, I manage to successfully avoid Johanna. Our run-ins are short and she doesn't speak to me. Occasionally I see her with Cressida talking in the library, and I snuff out the jealousy she's always been able to cull from me and continue with my day.

The next time I see her is at lunch. Clove and her gaggle are off somewhere else, so I'm sitting alone at a table until Johanna comes around and puts her tray in front of me, and sits directly across from me. I glower at her from my food and she purses her lips.

"You can't sit here," I tell her, narrowing my eyes.

"Stop being such a child," she chastises me as she dips a spoon into her stew. "We both have to live here, Kat. How long are you gonna do this?"

"I'm going to spend my entire sentence avoiding you."

Her eyes roll high in her head. "We have to deal with each other."

"No, we don't."

She sits back in her seat, crossing her arms. "Get over it. We did some illegal shit and we both got caught."

"You ruined my life," I hiss at her. "You ruined my good life that I made after you fucked it all up. So just stay the fuck away from me, okay?"

Before she can respond, Delly plops herself in the seat next to me, leaning an elbow on the table. "There a problem here?"

Both Johanna and I stare at Delly confusedly. But I know Johanna, and I can see the tiny bit of fire rising in her eyes. She can't possibly be jealous of this crazy girl. For many reasons: we are not dating, there is nothing going on between Delly and I, and the entire situation is ridiculous. "No," Johanna says slowly, carefully.

"Is she bothering you?" Delly asks, looking to me and ignoring the lasers Johanna is shooting at her with her eyes. I hate myself a little at being turned on at Johanna's small flames of jealousy.

"No, we're just talking -"

"Yes," I interrupt, grinning smugly at Johanna, "she is bothering me." Johanna's jaw slacks open a bit and I move my smug stare from her to Delly.

"Then you need to be on your way," Delly informs Johanna, the whites of her eyes wide around her blue, unfocused hues. "Because she doesn't want to talk to you."

Johanna cackles and leans forward on her forearms. "Are you fucking kidding?" I'm not sure whether it's directed at me or Delly, possibly both of us. Johanna's voice lowers to a rasp. "I will rip your throat out, you crazy bitch."

Delly stands abruptly, her chair clattering behind her on the floor. "You need to get the fuck out," she demands shrilly. "This is my wife and you need to step." Delly scoops up the blueberry pie from my plate with her bare hand and chucks it at Johanna, splattering it squarely on her chest.

Wife? My eyes widen as Johanna looks to me with faint amusement, then to Delly with pure ire. A guard comes to the table and places his hand on Delly's shoulder. "Oh, actually, I'm not -" I begin.

"It's good, we're good," Delly says as she picks up her chair and rights it on the floor. Slowly she lowers herself to the chair and watches with her wide eyes as Johanna stalks off in another direction. "You okay, Mockingjay?"

I widen my eyes and nod. "Yes, but, just for the record, I'm ...I'm not your wife?"

Delly stands up and nods her head, but then she makes a 'v' with her fingers and motions from my eyes to hers. "We on the DL? That's okay, Mockingjay."

"No, we're -" She doesn't allow me to defend myself before walking away and wiping her pie-covered hands on a napkin she lifts from another table. I shove my tray away from me and bury my head in my hands. Well, this has gone to shit rather fast. Instead of just talking to my ex - whom I hate, but is at least sane and familiar - I'm now the prison wife of a crazy person.

* * *

The shower is still my happy place, I decide. It's one of the few places - now that I know to come here at 5am - that I can be truly alone and at peace, even for a short period of time. It feels nice to get clean, to scrub this place off of me. Only one other person is in the bathroom as I get out and wrap my towel under my arms. I'm leaning in the mirror, examining the bags under my eyes, when I see her reflection behind me.

"We need to talk," she states flatly. Her glasses sit atop her wet head, and her skin is pink and flush from her hot shower.

"We have nothing to talk about," I spit at her, attempting to move around her but she steps into my way.

"I didn't name you, Katniss," she blurts out, squeezing her eyes shut in frustration. I'm momentarily taken aback by her admission that I don't do anything but stand there dumbly. "I know that's why you've been treating me like shit." Her voice softens. "I didn't name you."

Quickly I try to gather my wits. "You were mad at me for leaving and you -"

"Of course I was mad at you for leaving! You broke my fucking heart." Her eyes drop to the ground. "But I never lied to you. Why would I start now?" That much is true. Johanna is a lot of things, but a liar is not among them. She is frank and open, if nothing else.

I shrug my shoulders and feign disinterest. "Because this place sucks and maybe you think it'll suck a little less if I didn't hate you."

Johanna chuckles. "Is that what I'm thinking, or what you're thinking?"

"Who else could've named me, Jo?" I ask tiredly.

"Plenty of people! You were with me always. They all knew who you were. If you think Snow didn't dig into your past when he knew you were around the business, then you're even more of a child than I thought." If this is her insane way of trying to get into my good graces, she sucks at it. Then again, Johanna's always been horrible at apologies.

"Bullshit. You never forgave me for leaving," I accuse.

"Is that what this is about? I haven't seen you in over two years." As if it's insane to think we're still important to each other. I know we are, I can feel it. Despite everything that's happened, I can still feel it between us.

But I can't go back there, for many reasons. Chief of which is my wonderful, caring boyfriend. "Yeah, and during those two years I was building a great life. A wonderful life with a man I love -"

"Well hurray for you," she interrupts caustically. "Thirteen people were indicted, Katniss. You met them, you traveled with them."

"I know it was you," I declare plainly.

"Well, it wasn't." Her eyes darken dangerously. "And fuck you for thinking it was."

"Sure, right. What did they give you? Time off for every innocent person you named?" I pose, tilting my head to the side.

"Innocent? That's a fucking joke." She leans into me. "You carried that bag. Nobody had a gun to your head. Maybe your fiancée buys into your bullshit, but I know you." She jabs a finger into her chest. " _I_  know you. There were no complaints when I took you all over the world, but the second shit got real -"

"You put me in danger!" I protest hotly.

"You loved it," she dismisses with a roll of her eyes. She chuckles and shakes her head. "You were this boring little girl who wanted to feel special and bad."

"Don't you dare turn this around on me."

"I didn't name you," she says tiredly. "And you're right, I never forgave you for leaving. I'm still angry. I should have named you. Sometimes I wish I had." She shrugs her bony shoulders. "But I didn't. And now that we're in here together, the least we can do is treat each other like adults."

"And how do we do that?" I ask, drawing my eyes back down from the ceiling to her face.

"Maybe don't sic your prison wife on me, for starters," she says with a grin. "That girl sounded like someone stabbing a mouse with a fork repeatedly." I can't help but smile back at her, my cheeks blushing slightly. Before things can get too buddy-buddy between us, I shake my head. She could still be lying to me. Like Cressida said, prison changes a person. I wouldn't put it past Johanna to lie to me to save her own skin in here. Johanna may have morphed into a liar, just as I've morphed into the wife of a prisoner everyone calls "Crazy Eyes," and am now pretending to be best friends with some low-IQ evangelical Christians. People certainly do change in here.

"I can't make you any promises," I warn.

Johanna scoffs. "I never needed your promises, Katniss. You break them anyway." Ouch. I know what she's referring to, and she's not wrong. But it doesn't mean it doesn't sting to hear it. She pivots on her heels and walks out of the bathroom, leaving me alone with my confusing thoughts.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, having a real friend in here. Then I remember, Johanna and I were never friends.

* * *

"How are you?" I ask as I sit down across from Madge. She looks about twice the size as when I left not that long ago, but her blonde curls are still shiny and bouncy, her eyes still alight. Gale sits next to her, his hand on her lap, barely hiding his amusement at my situation. Jerk.

Madge sighs. "Large. Hostile. Nothing new. How about you?"

I expel a long breath. Where to begin? My crazy new prison wife? My ex who got me into prison trying to get back into my good graces? "Well, my new bunkmate is an evangelical Christian who thinks it's her duty to keep me on the - very literal - straight and narrow."

Madge looks very amused by this. I glare at her. "Shouldn't be too hard, right? Did you tell her about Peeta?"

"Yes, but..." My eyes drag to Gale who looks at me, his eyes narrowing. There's no point in keeping this from him; Madge will tell him anyway. "You cannot tell Peeta what I'm about to tell you."

"When would I talk to him?" Madge asks, rolling her eyes. That's true. Madge has never been a big fan of Peeta. But she never liked Johanna, either.

"I don't know, but promise me. Both of you." They look at each other, then nod to me. I sigh and put my face in my hands. "They put Johanna in here with me," I confess, peering at them through my fingers to see their reaction.

Madge's bright blue eyes bulge. "They what? How did that happen? Has she talked to you? Has she tried anything?"

"I have been avoiding her, but it's just a matter of time before we are forced to interact. It seems like a big place, but it's small. Plus there's no privacy so everyone knows my business." Madge and Gale both pause to consider this. "But please don't tell Peeta. He'll just worry, and I really don't want him to worry about me. I can handle myself, and I can definitely handle Johanna." My shoulders sag and I begin to feel marginally better now that I've released that information. It doesn't seem like such a secret from Peeta if someone else knows. "Let's talk about something else. Please."

Gale gives me a look - a knowing look - but he doesn't say anything. "Well, your brother is about as useful as a seven year old in birthing class," Madge informs me. I smile at the change in subject. "Laughs at everything."

"I tried," Gale says with a shrug. "But she keeps saying the phrase 'birthing canal' and I keep losing it."

Madge rolls her eyes at him and looks at me. "I can't believe you're gonna miss the birth. I'm kind of freaking out that you're not gonna be there. You're the Everdeen that I want to be there; this guy's not gonna be any help," she complains, prodding Gale. "I would've married you if I'd been gay," she says with a smile.

"And if I had been interested in you," I add. People always assume because I'm bisexual that I'm automatically interested in them. Madge is only teasing, of course, but there's a ring of truth to it.

"Oh please, who wouldn't wanna get with this?" she propositions me, rubbing her large belly. I laugh, one of my first genuine laughs in a while, and shake my head. "We just bought this crib that an alarm goes off if the baby stops breathing. That's a thing, you know. Babies just stop breathing."

"It does seem like they do everything they can to try and die on you, make you look like a bad parent," I reason.

Gale nods. "Katniss used to climb out of her crib and land on her head. We all thought she was gonna be retarded."

I glare at Gale and return my gaze to Madge. "And there's this skinny bitch in my pre-natal yoga class that looks like when a snake eats a rodent and hasn't digested it yet," Madge complains with a pout.

I pause, unable to contain what I really want to ask them any longer. "Can I ask you to do something for me?"

Madge shrugs her shoulders. "As long as it doesn't involve a lot of walking, sure."

"Can you find out who named me?"

"Aren't those documents sealed?" she asks, looking between Gale and me.

"I don't know. I just - I need to know if it was her." I'm looking at Madge because I know she will listen to reason. Or, that I can emotionally manipulate her. Gale is a harder sell.

"Why?" Gale presses. I hate how well he knows me.

"It's horrible enough being in here, but it's more horrible knowing that she's here and she's lying to me. I just want to know where I stand with her so I can make my peace." It sounds convincing enough, and I can see that I have Madge hooked. Gale is still wary, but he keeps his mouth shut.

Madge shrugs. "I'll ask my father." Right, her father! He's some small-time mayor or something, maybe he can pull some strings. "And I'll call you when I find something out."

"Thank you," I gush, holding her hands across the table. A guard shouts at me so I retract my hands and roll my eyes. "Really, though, thank you. As soon as you know."

"Yes yes. Between pushing a being out of my vagina and trying to keep our business afloat, I will find time to see if your former lesbian lover named you in the indictment." Madge grins and me and I grin back. This will help me figure out what to do with Johanna. If she's lying to me, then I can cut all ties without remorse. But I think I owe it to her, and to what we used to be, to at least try and figure out the truth.

"Katniss," Gale says, gazing over at me with his gray eyes. "Even if she didn't name you, keep in mind what being involved with her did to your life. Can you trust her?"

"I don't know," I answer honestly. "I don't really have a choice. It would be nice to have an ally in here," I say with a shrug. "Someone I know."

Gale nods. "I understand. Just, try not to forget the reason you left her in the first place. Don't let the microscope of being in the same prison as her obscure your perception. People don't really change," he offers with a sage nod, "they just adapt."

* * *

Clove's indoctrination includes several sermons during lunch. I try to avoid them, but with Cressida and Effie at some meeting instead of at lunch, I have no one else to sit with. And Delly doesn't come near these girls, so that helps. They're sort of like my tiny Christian army of protection. I just have to ignore all of their religious ramblings so I don't bash my head in with a rock.

For the most part I ignore their chattering, until it suddenly comes to a stop. It reminds me of the tales my father would tell about the coalmines his grandfather worked in. They'd have a canary in the mines to sing all day, and if the canary stopped singing, it means it was dead from lack of oxygen, and they'd all be dead soon, too.

Their constant bible chirping suddenly ceases, so I look up to see Johanna. She gives me a soft smile. I return it, briefly, before looking down at my plate. I've given a lot of thought to what Gale said. Even if Johanna didn't name me, it doesn't change that she willingly put me in danger, and that she is the sole reason I'm in prison and not enjoying my life. Not seeing the birth of my niece or nephew, not wrapped in the arms of my boyfriend.

"You can't sit here," Clove says, looking up annoyedly at Johanna. "No lesbos allowed."

Johanna chuckles, but it isn't in humor. No, that's the chuckle she gives when she's really pissed. "Are you fucking kidding?" She looks toward me. "And this is okay with you? Jesus fucking Christ, Katniss, we both have to live here." The disappointment in her tone is scathing. I panic briefly that she's going to "out" me as an Atheist.

Clove stands from her seat and raises an eyebrow at Johanna. "Are you fuckin' deaf or somethin'? Get lost, dyke." Clove is one of the few people marginally shorter than Johanna, so she's not all that intimidating.

Johanna's fingers grip the bottom of her tray so tightly I think it's going to snap in her hands. My heart, which evidently is not connected to my brain, breaks for her. But she's right, we both have to live here. If I make enemies with my bunkmate, who knows how terrible she'll make my life? Johanna's already fucked up my life, so no loss there.

But I'm abandoning my principles and the first person I ever truly loved. Both emotions twist inside my gut as I watch her look at me, throwing up the walls in her eyes just after I see the devastation in them. I've seen that look before - the day I left her. You never forget the face of the person whose heart you've broken. I imagine it's the same look she had in her eyes as a teenager when her terrible ex-girlfriend denied her presence at their lunch table, too. No doubt she's thinking upon that, and how her taste in women really hasn't improved like I thought it did. I'm no better than her shitty ex. Actually, I'm worse, because I know what my rejection is doing to her.

Without a word she dumps her tray in a garbage nearby and stalks off down the hallway. None of the guards move to stop her. Perhaps they've seen what happened. I can't be sure because my eyes are glued to my tray. But this is the right thing to do, I remind myself as Clove lowers herself back into her seat and trash talks Johanna. Their words only serve to make me feel sicker and I let my fork rest on the tray, my food untouched.

If it's the right thing to do, why does it feel so terrible?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! An update within days of another story! Thank you to everyone still reading/commenting/favoriting/following/kudos-ing this story. 
> 
> And, as always, thanks to my lovely beta Johannas-Motivational-Insults for her beta read.


	4. A Hefty Fine for Heartbreak

"Welcome to the electrical department!" In spite of the officer's positive intonation, everyone in my electrical section looks pretty miserable. Cressida, of course, does not. She's already fiddling with a screwdriver and making some sort of dildo gesture with it. I look toward the front of the room to the bespectacled man leading the group. Officer Latier, or Beetee as he's asked us to call him, is trying to teach us. He seems nice enough, as far as the officers go, with a soft face and a small belly. His smile is easy and genuine, and he looks like someone I would befriend if we were not in these circumstances. Rue is in this class, which is nice, but her and Cressida are the only women I recognize. I'm not great at making friends anyway and I haven't made any attempt to stretch beyond the four or five women who have come to know me. "The handbook I gave you will be very informative and helpful in your journey to becoming, well, mediocre electricians."

Cressida snorts and twirls the screwdriver on its point a few times before Beetee walks by and snatches it from her. "What the hell?"

He holds the screwdriver up as he paces the room. "All tools and equipment will be checked out. Watson, you'll be doing that job for the next few weeks." Rue nods her head and walks into the cage that holds the equipment and tools with her handbook under her arm. There's a little stool in there that she dutifully sits upon and awaits further instruction. I'm not sure but I think he did it out of pity; she's too young to be handling power tools, at least in my estimation. "You will learn how to fix things. I'm sure this was not top priority for any of you in terms of assignment, but it is practical. Everyone knows how to wash clothes, not everyone can fix a faulty dryer. Could potentially save you money." He shrugs his shoulders and adjusts his coke-bottle glasses. "Who knows, it could flourish into a career?"

"You hear that, Everdeen?" Cressida inquires with a nudge of her elbow. "We could  _flourish_."

Her sarcasm aside, that's true. I was disappointed to not be able to do the GED program helping the other inmates, but Haymitch informed me that the education program was shut down temporarily due to budget cuts. Instead I got sent to electrical. It isn't so bad, though. I flip open the large handbook and begin reading as my desk-mate boredly twirls her blonde hair in her fingers.

"You really gonna read that, Everdeen?" she questions, nodding to the book.

"Well I'd rather not electrocute myself," I reply condescendingly. She shrugs her shoulders and hefts open the book to a random page in the middle and begins reading.

After about twenty minutes of silence, I can feel Cressida's blue eyes scrutinizing me from the side. Slowly I drag my eyes from my handbook to her face and shake my head once. "So you and Mason, how'd that happen?" My eyes roll and I return them to my book, trying to block out her penetrating gaze from beside me. She sticks the end of a pen in her mouth and gnaws on the end of it. "C'mon, Everdeen."

"Katniss."

She smirks. "C'mon  _Katniss_. I look at the two of you, and I don't see shit that you'd have in common."

I flatten my palm against my handbook and swivel on my stool to turn my full attention to her. "You don't know anything about me," I accuse, in a much more serious tone than I intended.

She cocks her eyebrow. "It's not like you're a riddle wrapped in an enigma, Katniss. You're a good girl that got caught up in a bad situation, seduced by a charismatic recruiter. But, she fucks up and falls for you, and you for her, but eventually the lifestyle catches up." I blink a few times but don't make any indication that she's right. She knows she is, though, and shrugs. "I've seen it tons of times in my career as a junkie."

A sigh pushes past my lips as I bring my eyes back to my handbook. That's a fairly accurate summation of what happened between Johanna and me. Cressida knows it too by the smug, dimpling grin that spreads on her face. Exasperatedly I look back at her. "If you knew how it happened, why did you ask?"

"That's how I think it happened," she corrects. "But something is fucked in translation because you both ended up here and you don't speak to each other." She wriggles her fingers through her hair and tosses it over to the side to more clearly expose the little green vine tattoos down her scalp and neck. "So what happened, hm? Someone cheat? Dyke drama is always an event."

"No," I respond slowly. "No one cheated. At least not that I know of." I say that, but I'm sure Johanna never would've cheated on me. It's not in her nature. Her entire business is built on trust and loyalty; that extended to her personal life as well. "It's complicated," I dismiss, hoping that will stave Cressida's burning curiosity.

It doesn't. She leans her elbow on her handbook and gestures around. "Look around, Everdeen. We've got time."

* * *

_Two Years Ago_

Hotels typically have a certain smell to them; carpet cleaner and disinfectant masked by some unseen lavender room refresher. But this one doesn't. The breeze from the open window wafts in the smell of fresh bread from the wonderful cafe on the ground floor. From out that same window you can see the giant steel beams of the Eiffel Tower, standing proudly in the center of Paris. Johanna is sitting at the desk, typing away at her laptop with acute concentration. Every so often she swears to herself, but I've learned by now to ignore it. It'll pass like storm clouds.

As wonderful as Paris has been, it's become a little stale. There are only so many cheese buns I can stuff in my face, so many museums I can visit, before boredom begins to seep into my veins. Johanna's been chained to this city for almost two weeks now, and we haven't done much together outside of a few dinners in our hotel room and, as always, a ridiculous among of sex.

"Jo?" I call, flopping over on my stomach and looking at her. She doesn't turn around, but I continue anyway. "I miss you."

Her fingers halt above the keyboard and I hear her let out a long sigh. Guilt trips aren't usually my thing, but sometimes Johanna is hard to reach. If I must do so through emotional manipulation, then I must do so. "I don't have time to wander around flea markets and drink cafe au lait with you, brainless."

I pout and rest my chin on my palms. "But I - I miss you."

Johanna finally turns around in her chair, and upon seeing my face, her expression softens considerably. She stands from her desk and runs her fingers through her hair. "I'm sorry. I'm just so fucking stressed."

"You're always so fucking stressed," I tack on, raising my eyebrow. "I feel like a fucking housewife. Is this our life now? You work constantly and I stay home and wait for you at the door with a newspaper and a cocktail?"

Johanna crouches down in front of the bed so she's eye level with me, and places a gentle kiss on my lips. "I know. Listen. Why don't you let me take you out tonight?" she asks, raising her eyebrows up. "Anywhere you want to go."

"Yeah?" She nods and I pull myself up onto my knees, and Johanna straights her legs to stand. At this height differential she has to lean down to kiss me and she does, sweeping my hair behind my neck as she takes my lips. It's not that I wanted her to take me somewhere, I just want her attention. Once we pull away she grins at me.

"Are you up for a trip to Istanbul this weekend?" she inquires suddenly, tilting her head to the side.

I'm so excited about going away with her; I completely miss the calculation in her eyes. "What? Sure!"

And I miss the look of pure relief on her face when I agree; I only see the elation in her smile. "Oh, Kat, that's great." She picks up her phone from her desk and begins tapping away on it. "Thank you. You should be able to get there and back within a day, you wouldn't even have to stay overnight. I'll call and set up a ticket for you."

"Wait," I call, shuffling off the bed and snatching her phone from her. I hang up on whatever drug dealing ticket agent she has on speed-dial and toss the phone behind me onto the mattress. Her dark eyes narrow at me in confusion. The realization washes over my face and my jaw slackens. "Oh, my god. I thought we were going on a vacation. Together. You know, like normal people."

She hardens her expression and plants her hands on her hips. "I really need you to do this," she pleads, and I can see she's trying to keep her patience, but only because she wants a favor from me. I should have seen this coming. Johanna's always been a master manipulator, but never with me. Unless I was just blind to it until now. "I would never ask if I had any other option, Katniss, you know that."

"Absolutely not," I reply hotly, looking down into her eyes. "I told you very specifically after I did that, that I would never do that again. I don't want to be your drug mule, Johanna. For fuck's sake, I'm your girlfriend!"

"And as my girlfriend, I thought you'd be willing to do me a fucking favor," she retorts with a roll of her eyes. "You're such a naive asshole sometimes."

"I'm an asshole?" I balk, tucking in my chin.

"I'm drowning right now," she explains in a tight voice, "and you won't even consider helping me?"

Emotional manipulation to get Johanna's attention is one thing; for her to try and use it to get me to carry her drugs or her drug money is absolutely ridiculous. The way she's looking at me, like she's genuinely disappointed I won't put my life on the line for her, is more heartbreaking than the words that come out of my mouth. "I can't do this. I'm done."

Her compressed lips slip open in surprise, but the moment of vulnerability is quickly masked by one of shock and anger. "You're done? What do you mean, you're done?"

"I mean I can't do this anymore, Johanna," I tell her softly. "I can't be with you."

The heartache is as plain in her eyes as the brown of her irises and it takes everything within me to wipe my face clean of any expression at all. She swallows down her emotions and hardens her stare again. "Where will you go?"

"Back home, where I'm not your errand girl," I reply snidely. At the moment, I don't know where I'll go. Probably to Madge's house, she'll pick me up from the airport, in all the pieces I'll be in once I get home. My boots are next to the bed and I begin tugging them on as Johanna paces around the room.

She lets out a harsh cackle at her own expense. "How did I not see this coming?" she asks rhetorically, tossing her hands up on the air. I stand up to meet her gaze. "You know what? I did see this coming. The day we met, I broke rule number one. Don't fall in love with a straight girl. Especially a virgin."

My eyes blink rapidly in surprise at her sneering tone and I take a few steps back. "That's what you think this is about? That I like men?" I roll my eyes and scoff, "I suppose that's easier than coming to terms with the fact that you're a drug dealer and it is ruining everything good in your life!"

I whirl around and storm toward the door. Just as I reach the door handle, I hear her speak up. "I thought we were friends."

"We were never friends," I tell her without turning around.

She huffs. "Right. Well I thought we were at least a team." With a deep sigh I harden my resolve and open the door, slamming it closed behind me.

* * *

_Current Day_

"There's just so many bibles," Cashmere complains as she sticks her fork into her soft vegetables. "How are we supposed to know which one is the truth and which one isn't?"

Clove rolls her eyes and sighs like Cashmere is the dumbest person on the planet. Unfortunately, they could all vie for that title and they would probably all win. I'd never sit with them, except for the fact that it keeps Johanna at a distance, which is what I need right now. Rehashing our breakup with Cressida dredged up a lot of feelings of guilt and anger that I had long buried in the sand.

"It's all truth, stupid," Clove spits at her. "It's all the official word of God. Just a little bit different, is all."

"Why would God tell people different things?" Cashmere asks, blinking vacantly.

"So he don't get repetitive," Clove insists. "You know how boring it is when someone tells the same goddamn story over and over again? No one wants to do that, not even God. So he tells people the story and a little bit different each time. Adds a little, takes away a little. But it's all the same."

Cashmere nods and opens her mouth like she's finally got it, but I don't think she's got it. "Different time periods," I say quietly, looking toward the blonde. "The different bibles were all written at different points in history, so the perspectives shift. The message, though, is essentially the same. Whether Moses separated the sea, or separated some reeds, either way he got the Israelites to freedom."

Clove pats me on the back and looks at me in open-mouthed wonderment. "You see? Damn, even the new girl's got it." Once she removes her hand she scoops her fork back up and points it at me. "We've got to baptize you, new girl!"

Cashmere and Glimmer are all a-titter with excitement and I look between the three of them. "Baptize?"

Clove nods her head, sweeping her black hair from her face. "Well, sort of. It ain't holy water, but we do it all the same here. You get baptized and then you are reborn as a follower of Jesus, Panem Penitentiary style."

"And the prison is okay with this?"

Clove shrugs. "They can't do nothin'. Religious freedom and all that." My eyes widen but I return my attention back to my food and poke around at my plate. I suppose there's no harm in a little fake baptism, if it continues my tenuous but peaceful relationship with my bunkmate. Across the lunchroom I spy Effie, Cressida, and Johanna sitting at a table together, laughing at some demonstrative story Cressida is telling, complete with inappropriate hand gestures.

Since I rejected her at lunch a few days ago, I haven't seen a lick of Johanna other than across the yard outside or sometimes passing in the hallways. She never meets my eyes, though. I've gotten into the habit of sending Clove to the laundry with my clothes to avoid Johanna entirely, which Clove doesn't mind since Glimmer and Cashmere work down there, too. In exchange, I make sure both our sections are ready for inspection at any time, which she appreciates.

Later that day Clove and I are in our bunk, reading silently to ourselves. The pickings in the library are pretty slim - more self-help books than is absolutely necessary - but I found a decent novel that was easy to lose myself in. "Hey Everdeen. I mean, Katniss." I peer over my book to see the smiling face of Cressida. "You busy tomorrow night?"

"Oh, well, I was planning on taking in a movie, maybe doing some shopping." Cressida rolls her eyes at my extensive sarcasm and I grin back at her. "I don't think so, why?"

The blonde eyes Clove before continuing. "We were uh, thinking about having a little pow wow after lights out. Wanted to know if you wanted to join us."

A pow wow? Something about her evasive phrasing makes me think we'll be doing something illegal. Of course, all legality is somewhere of a gray area here. Clove perks up from the bed next to me. "Katniss is busy tomorrow, lesbo."

Cressida cocks her eyebrow at me. "Really? With this fucking nut job?"

"I'm busy?" I ask, folding my book closed and looking over at my bunkmate.

Clove nods her head rapidly. "Tomorrow's your baptism, Katniss! We can't do it during the day, 'cos they use the chapel for other stuff, but at night nobody goes in there. Then we can do the baptism and not be disturbed."

"Baptism?" Cressida inquires. She settles her eyes on me. "Katniss. Let's take a walk, shall we?" I oblige her and get up off my bed, slipping on my shoes to follow her around the dorm. Once we get out into the hallway, she gently shoves me toward the wall to face her and her inquisition. "Are you fucking crazy? You're not really a religious person, are you? I mean, you've had sexual relations with women, Everdeen. They don't like that shit."

My eyes roll back in my head. "Of course not. I'm not religious at all. I'm Agnostic."

"Agnostic and bisexual? Damn you can't commit to anything, can you? God or Atheism, pussy or dick." I give her a droll look and she holds up her palms. "Sorry. Anyway, you can't let her do that shit to you. Do you know what she does?" I shake my head. "She gets this big vat of water from god-knows-where, and hauls it on the stage of the chapel. She rants for a while, then basically tries to fuckin' drown you in this tap water." My face scrunches in disgust and Cressida widens her eyes. "Yeah. I'm sure she forgot to mention the girl she nearly killed doing that."

"What?"

"You heard me. Almost drowned some poor girl all in the name of Jesus," she explains, putting her hand to her heart and the other in the air dramatically. She claps her raised hand on my shoulder. "You've got to tell her you're not doing that."

I sigh. If I don't let Clove do her weird baptism, she probably won't want to hang out with me anymore. Then it'll be open season for Johanna and I. Or maybe not, she's really pissed at me. Cressida pins me with her stare until I relent. "Okay, fine. I'll tell her I'm not doing it."

"Good. And let her down easy, 'cause Katniss?" I nod. "She's fucking crazy, that girl. You don't know why everyone's in here. And even the ones you do, you don't know that they're telling you the truth. On top of that, just because their offenses are minor, doesn't mean they're good people. Not everyone's a victim of the system. A lot of people deserve to be here."

Her expression is clear of any levity as she relays this information to me. Clove must really be a fucked up person for even Cressida to not trust her or want to deal with her. I nod my head again and she takes a step back from me. "Thanks, Cressida."

"No problem. The way I see it, we non-crazies have to look out for one another." She winks at me and saunters away, down another hallway in a different direction. Gathering my courage I go back toward my dorm, to see my bunkmate holding her rosary and reciting a silent prayer.

I wait for her to finish before sitting down in my bed and facing her. "Clove?" She looks up at me. I try for a moment to identify the trace of crazy that Cressida insists is in there. Instead, in her dark brown eyes, all I see is flecks of green and possibly a little bit of a lack of focus. Other than that, she seems okay. "Look, I need to confess something to you."

"This ain't confession," Clove interrupts. "Even Sister Paylor won't sit down for confessions."

"Not a confession like that," I explain gently. She tilts her head to the side. "The thing is, I'm ...I'm not really all that religious." Her eyes squint. "I don't actually believe in God or Jesus or the bible. I believe in science and medicine and, you know, real things. I mean, I'm not saying there is no God, or that what you believe is wrong. I think it's great, what Christianity can do. But um, I don't think it would be right for you to baptize me. Seeing as how I don't really follow the rules, you know? I don't want to waste your time."

"But you're a sinner," she combats in an even voice. "Don't you want to be clean?"

"Yeah, see, that's the thing. I don't think I'm a sinner. I don't think there's sin like that. My being in love with a woman for a time, or having sex before marriage with my fiancé, that's not sinful. That's life. Anything that teaches you love between two consenting adults is sin, is probably bullshit." My eyes widen. "No offense."

"Oh." Her face falls in disappointment. Disappointment I can handle. I was expecting her to sort of go off the rails, but she seems to be taking it okay. "I appreciate you being honest with me," she says, a smile coming on her face. "You're not a bad person, Katniss, even if you are a sinner. I'll pray for you."

I sigh and give her a tight-lipped smile. "Right. Thanks." I snatch my book from where I left it and toss off my shoes. Propping my feet up and placing my head on the sad pile of fluff they call a pillow, I absorb myself back into my novel. That went much better than I expected. Maybe Cressida's overblown Clove's craziness. I know they don't like each other, so perhaps she's misconstrued the whole situation. I consider myself a pretty good judge of character - some minor setbacks in my past notwithstanding - and Clove seems all right to me.

* * *

I was wrong.

Clove is not all right.

I spent the day with her and her friends, with everything seemingly back to normal. They didn't try to pressure me into the baptism anymore, and we had a normal lunch and dinnertime, which was a nice reprieve. I didn't want to join Cressida for whatever her pow wow was, because I figured she would invite Johanna and I wanted to avoid that awkwardness. Instead I returned to my bed and settled in early. I was really sleepy anyway, so it was easy for me to drift off.

I awoke a few hours later tied to a chair in the chapel, with all the lights off, surrounded by Clove, Glimmer and Cashmere. I don't know how they got me here other than they must have slipped something into my drink at dinner. My hands are bound behind me, and there's a makeshift gag made out of a ripped up uniform around my mouth.

Clove is reciting some passage from the bible and I can't help but roll my eyes when her back is turned. To my side sits a bucket of some suspicious looking water, that I'm now thinking they have no intention of baptizing me in. They're going to drown me for being a sinner. Fighting against the restraints is of no use; these idiots can't spell or do simple addition, but damn they can tie a knot.

The lights come on just above the stage and I breathe a sigh of relief. One of the guards must've seen that I was missing. But instead of the loud voice of Officer Thread or the soft voice of Officer Odair, I hear the high voice that I recognize immediately and grimace. Of course.

"What the fuck is going on, hm?" Johanna asks, sauntering up the side of the stage. Her eyes meet mine and in those fiery brown hues I can see the start of Johanna's anger. She looks around at the girls. "Here's what's going to happen. You're all going to leave, right now."

"Or what, dyke?" Clove sneers, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Or I will fuck you." Johanna steps closer to the other raven-haired girl, coming right up to Clove's face. Clove's one of the few people Johanna has a natural height advantage on, even if it's just two inches, but she's making the most of it. "Literally." The older girl leans in, pulling her glasses up to rest on the crown of her head. "I will sneak into your bunk in the middle of the night and eat your pussy." Clove's brown eyes widen to comically large proportions. "And I'll do it so good and so soft you'll be on the edge of coming by the time you wake up. And I'll stop." I'd hate to admit how turned on I am, so I pretend that I'm not. ...But I am and I can't forget it. "And you'll be on the brink of sleep and you will beg for it." Her voice lowers to a purr. "Oh, you will beg for it. Maybe I'll be nice, and maybe I won't." She gets right into Clove's face, an inch from the crazy girl's lips. "And if I'm nice? The things you feel will ruin you forever."

Clove rolls her eyes but the sass doesn't reach them. She's petrified. The shorter girl stumbles as she takes a step back and waves toward her minions. "Let's go. Clearly this lesbo can't keep her hands to herself around women." She levels her gaze at Johanna. "You disgust me."

"Mm, but you'll love me when I'm down on that muff, girl." Johanna flicks her tongue between her lips a few times like a snake and winks. Clove huffs and storms away with her clique of maniacs into the darkened part of the chapel. Johanna pulls her glasses back over her eyes and reaches to undo my gag. She hesitates and looks down at me with an amused grin. "Gotta say Everdeen, I don't hate you with this look. If we were on better terms, can you imagine the things I could do to you like this? And you couldn't say a goddamn word." My eyes flash in anger, but also arousal, and she catches it. "You always did like to be the submissive, didn't you, darling?"

"Fuck you," I try to spit around the gag. It comes out like "furf foo" but I think she knows what I mean. My eyes are angry, I hope, and not as turned on as the throbbing between my legs would indicate.

She raises her eyebrow. "Oh? I guess I could just leave you here. I'm sure Sister Paylor would love to walk in on you tied up like some low budget porn gone awry."

I roll my eyes at her theatrics. There's no way she's going to leave me here. ...Then again, after I made her feel like shit at lunch, maybe she will. No one has ever said that Johanna Mason is not vindictive. "Please don't leave," I plead as best I can. Johanna used to love when I'd beg. It's not something I did often, but she loved it. I'd haul it out every so often when Johanna was in one of her moods, or she was trying to withhold sex or orgasm from me.

Her eyes flash in angry recognition of that phrase. She purses her lips. "You know, since I have you here, I'm gonna go ahead and use this opportunity to tell you something." Johanna places both her hands on my thighs and leans in close. "I didn't name you. I know you don't believe me, and I can't really do anything to make you. But if we could just act fucking civil, that'd be great." She backs up and folds her arms across her chest. "You're the closest thing I have to a friend in this place." Her eyes drop to the ground and again I feel the twinge in my heart. Sympathy.

I nod my assent. Finally she unties my gag and I cough a few times. "Thank you." Johanna untangles the binds around my wrists and I shake them free and stand up off of the chair. I level my gaze at her, fighting down the building arousal in my stomach. "But we were never friends, Jo."

She smirks. "You're right, we weren't. We still aren't. But, we don't have to be enemies, right?"

"Right." We walk out of the chapel together, down the darkened corridors. For once I'm glad for Panem's lack of good security guards because we'd definitely be in trouble for an after hours walk. "How did you know I was in there?" I ask, looking over at her.

"Cressida told me what went down between you and Clove. And unlike you, I could see that Clove is a fucking psycho." I blush in embarrassment and my humiliation makes Johanna laugh softly. "It's okay. We all misjudge people sometimes. You do tend to live in your own little bubble, Kat."

Her condescension aside, I can't say I'm not grateful for her intervention. "Well thank you, really." She shrugs like it's no big deal, but that potentially could've been a disaster. Clove is small but scrappy. Glimmer is slight, and not particularly athletic. Cashmere has quite an athletic build, and I don't doubt that she could probably have taken Johanna if it came to a fight. Johanna may be shrugging me off, but she nearly risked her life for me. "I owe you an apology for what happened the other day at lunch." Johanna's eyes cloud over and she drops my gaze, instead staring at the floor as we walk. "Really. I'm sorry. I should have stuck up for you. I was being a fucking coward."

"I can take care of myself," she counters back at me. The intensity of her response takes me by surprise but she shrugs her shoulders once more. "She's not the first bully I've ever encountered, you know that. And she's not the last."

"Still, I appreciate what you did for me today. I won't forget it." I take her hand and squeeze it as we get to my dorm, offering her a brief smile that she almost returns, before I duck back into my dorm and tiptoe to my bed. Clove is already there, either asleep or pretending to be, so I settle into my bed. I don't think she'll try to kill me tonight, and it's not like I couldn't take her.

I don't get much sleep that night.

* * *

Over the next few days things sort of simmer down into normal. I spend my meals with Johanna and Cressida, and sometimes Effie. Every so often Mags or Sister Paylor joins us, but usually Cressida's conversational topics drive them away. It's still awkward between Johanna and me - there's a lot of ground for us to cover before we can be friendly again - but at least she doesn't look at me with disdain anymore. If we can't be friends, at least we can tolerate each other. There's still a level of care between us; she proved it when she came to my rescue in the chapel.

A young black girl I barely know is getting out, and a few of us were tasked with putting together a small going away party for her. We don't have a lot of accouterment to prepare a party, but we make do. Prison inmates are nothing if not a little thrifty. Johanna and I are tasked with putting up streamers, while Cressida and Effie hang signs that wish the girl well in her new freedom.

"Did you make this?" Johanna asks, holding up the end of the sign for me while I affix the other side to the wall.

"Yes," I tell her with a nod. I motion back to the table. "The first time I spelled it wrong." Her name is a misspelling of the word destiny, spelled Destinee, which I did not know. On the table are the remains of the first sign I tried to make before Cressida told me I was 'trying too hard.'

Johanna chuckles. "And they say you went to college." Behind Johanna a few of the girl's friends are shedding a few tears for her impending arrival. Once the person in charge of food rolls in the small buffet they put together, Destinee should be coming in right after. "God I hate seeing people go," Johanna reveals suddenly, as I get closer to her to pin the other side. I move the small step stool next to her and climb it. "Reminds me of how much time I have."

I glance at her and smile. "But think of the story you'll have," I tease, giving her a grin.

"That's my line," she reminds me in mock offense.

"I know. You used to trot that out in times of suckiness." I climb down off the footstool and step back to appraise my work, to check if the banner is straight. "Like that time I got sick in Java."

Johanna's chuckles escalate into full on laughter at my expense. "That is a great fuckin' story. The entire village came out to see you poop!"

As I jab Johanna in her ribcage, a small blonde girl rolls in the cart with the food on it. Just behind her is another woman who somehow got her hands on a stereo. She presses a button as Destinee enters the room, and the small recreation area is filled the sound with an older hip-hop song with a pounding bass line. Girls immediately pair off and start dancing, and Johanna and I watch from the side of the room. Finally she pinches me above my elbow. "You gonna miss a chance to let everyone see you dancing?"

I grin at her and pull her onto the dance floor, placing my hands on her hips. Her eyes widen a bit in shock, but she moves with me in rhythm. Her wrists drape around my neck as she gyrates her hips to the song, rolling her pelvis against me. My breath catches in my throat, and she hears it, so she begins moving her hips in earnest. Her piercing brown eyes never leave mine until I force her to spin around and press her back into my chest. My hands move from her shoulders down her arms as she extends them, entwining our fingers together as she moves up and down my body.

My heart is racing and the way her hips are jerking to the beat, well, my libido is suddenly very, very awake. She lets go of my hands to ruffle her fingers through her hair, dipping her head back to rest on my shoulder. I move my hands down to her waist to feel her body moving against me, lost in the sensation of a warm body pressed against my own. Johanna bends down to the floor, pressing her ass against my crotch and flipping her hair back as she slowly gets up, arching her back. This causes a loud round of applause from the other women and catcalling, which makes Johanna grin hugely.

I try not to think about how adorable Johanna is when she smiles like that.

I try not to think about how this is the second time in a week Johanna has made me embarrassingly horny.

And I especially am not going to think about how badly I want to drag her into that chapel and fuck her until I hear her scream my name like she used to.

Because that would be wrong. It would be wrong and deplorable, and I am going to get married once this is over. To a man that is nothing like Johanna. Then why, I ask silently to whatever higher power may be listening, does this feel so natural to me?

* * *

During some free time a few days later, I remember to call up Peeta. I haven't spoken to him in a few days - a mark of a rapid upturn in my general mood here - but I should see how he's doing. Madge should be going into labor any day now and I'm hoping he'll remember to at least call me before or after. He's also setting up the bakery so he's been busy as well. He sends me letters, though I usually fail to return the gesture.

"Hey Katniss," Peeta greets brightly as the phone call finally goes through. "I haven't heard from you in a while. I got worried maybe you joined a girl gang."

I chuckle into the receiver. "Almost. Some religious whack jobs tried to baptize me."

"Baptize you?" he asks, and I can almost hear his eyes popping out. His shock devolves into laughter. "That's the strangest thing I've heard all day, for sure."

"Not even the strangest thing that's ever happened here," I add with a grin. A silence falls on the line and I twist the cord between my fingers. "Hey, so, did Madge give you any information to tell me?"

I hear him sigh on the other line. "She told me you asked about Johanna." Before I can respond, he cuts in, "It's not a good idea for you two to get close again. And I'm not saying that as your jealous boyfriend not in jail with you. I'm saying that because I care about you."

"I can handle myself," I assure him, trying to not lose my patience. I need to know. This could drastically alter my relationship with Johanna, which I am dying to get back to normal. Perhaps she and I could have a shot at friendship. We've been spending more time together lately, and it's felt so natural, so wonderful. Having someone in here that truly understands me? That makes a world of difference. I don't mention to him, of course, the lingering feelings of attraction I have for her. "How's Madge?" I deflect.

"She's fine," he sighs into the receiver. "The doctor says only a few days now. If she doesn't go into labor within the week, they're going to induce. She's freaking. Gale's calm. The usual."

"And the book store?"

"Still standing," he confirms. "Madge obviously hasn't been there but Gale has gone to check on any shipments and make sure everything is running smoothly."

That's good. I'm going to need something once I get out of here, and I'm relying on our bookstore to be that thing. "Great."

There is a long pause on the line, and I nearly interrupt Peeta to tell him that we don't have much time on these phones for his dramatic silences when he cuts in with a flat, "She named you." The phone slips through my hands, clattering against the wall. Quickly I use the cord to pull it up and place it next to my ear. "Katniss, did you hear me?"

I did hear him. I wish I hadn't. "Yeah."

There's a long stretch of silence between us. "So what are you going to do?"

"What can I do?" I snap back. "She's living in here with me. I can't avoid her, Peeta, even if I wanted to. I don't know what to do." You have one minute the robot voice comes through the line. "Shit. God, now I wish I'd never asked."

"It's better to know the truth," he insists in his firm, gentle voice. "This way you can tell her you don't want to be her friend and just move on."

"It's not that easy," I counter tiredly. I rest my shoulder against the wall, and then lean my forehead against the cool tile.

"Why not?"

"It just isn't! She was a big part of my life, and now that I'm living here with her, I can't just shut her out."

Another pregnant pause. "Can't? Or won't?"

I'm both startled and angered by his question. "What are you implying?"

"Nothing," he resigns. "I'm just saying that with a little effort, you might be able to avoid her for a while. Find some hobbies. I'll come visit more often. Just please, stay away from her, Katniss."

"Are you telling me what to do?"

Peeta chuckles. "Would it make a difference if I did? I'm trying to suggest what I think is best."

"Yeah, well, when you're in a fucking women's prison you can tell me what you think." I slam the receiver down and storm off back toward my bunk. Johanna named me. All this time, I really believed that she didn't do it. I wanted to believe that she wouldn't betray me. The last week of being closer to her has been the best time I've had since I arrived. Now I'm so shaken by my own rage I can't even think straight. This is my punishment for breaking her heart? Fifteen months of my life robbed from me? That seems like a hefty fine for heartbreak.

* * *

_Two Years Ago_

Johanna is sitting on the edge of the bed as I emerge from the bathroom, frantically still trying to find my passport. She's been on the phone with someone, talking in low tones since I returned and began to pack my things. My flight is in less than two hours and she hasn't even pretended to care that I might not be able to leave the country. She said she'd look when I texted her while I was out, but it looks like she hasn't left the bed in hours.

As I round the bed toward her I see her staring blankly ahead out the open window. Night has fallen on Paris, not that it would be obvious since the entire city is lit up brilliantly, as it usually is. Johanna's face is expressionless; her normally pale skin even a lighter shade of white. "Are you finally off the phone?" I snark at her, tilting my head. She doesn't respond, which is unlike her. Johanna loves an argument. Of course, I am leaving her, so perhaps she's just being stubborn. "Look, I know you're upset, but I need you to look at me. Act like I'm a person in this room, okay?"

"My mom died."

I freeze. I stare hard down at her, positive that I'm not hearing her correctly. If she's trying to stop me from leaving by lying about this, that's low, even for her. But by the glossiness of her eyes and the way she's swallowing saliva at a rapid pace, she's being serious. "What?" I sit down next to her on the plush mattress.

"One of her neighbors called me. They said she didn't come out to check her mail in the morning, and they found her in her bedroom, dead. An aneurysm. I don't know," she croaks, shaking her head and sniffing mucus back up into her head. "He said so much to me, I don't remember half of it." Sadly she huffs out a laugh. "The fucked up part is that the first thing I thought of was that I needed to call her and tell her."

My hand begins instinctively rubbing her back. My instinct to nurture her is second nature to me now, even though I have firmed up in my mind that I am leaving our relationship. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Can you get us two seats on the next flight out of Paris?" she inquires, blinking over to me. Tears have started spilling down her cheeks, and her normally light voice is even more high-pitched. "I have to figure out the funeral, there's no one else to do it."

Behind her sadness I can see her mind whirring and I know I need to interrupt her thought train. "Jo, I can't go with you," I reveal softly.

Her head whips to the side. "What? You're still leaving?" I nod. "Katniss, my mom just died!" The heartbreak and hopelessness in her voice is like an arrow in my heart, but I have to stay strong. If I go home with Johanna and work her through her grief, I will never leave her. I will always be the accomplice to a drug dealer. I will always be tethered to her and this lifestyle that is slowly tearing us apart.

"I know, and I'm so sorry about your mom." I mean this, too. I've met Diane and she was nothing but wonderful in the few times I saw her. She was full of life and so, so very proud of Johanna. In return, Johanna adored her. "But this doesn't change anything."

"I can't fucking believe you," she seethes through her tears, her breaths coming out in short little gasps. "Top drawer, under my t-shirts," she mumbles, looking down at the floor and motioning to the dresser to our right, in front of the bed. She can't even bear to look at me right now. I don't blame her. I'm nearly ashamed of myself, but I have to be strong.

I roll my eyes. "Jesus, Jo, you hid it?" I open the drawer and retrieve my passport, tucking it into my back pocket. I'll transfer it to my bag later, but for now I need to leave. Grabbing my suitcase I whirl it around, making haste toward the door.

"Please don't leave," she begs, her voice softer than I've ever heard it. It stops me in my tracks and I have to take in a deep breath to stop myself from crying. My eyes drop down to my left hand, which is clutching the handle of my rolling suitcase.

I turn around and walk the few paces back toward Johanna, who has stood up from the bed and made a few advances toward me. Her face is crumpled, her mascara running down her cheeks. The urge to wipe her tears away and hold her to make this all better is so overwhelming I have to look away for a moment. Her breaths are still ragged, short pants in between silent, shuddering sobs. Slowly I reach down, gently sliding off the little platinum band around my finger, careful to avoid hitting the triangular diamond that is set in the top. Johanna watches me as I place the ring on the dresser, the clink of metal hitting wood the only noise in the room over her choked breaths.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, unable to meet her bloodshot brown eyes. "I can't." With that I pivot around and grab my suitcase, heading quickly toward the door. I open and slam it behind me, closing out Johanna. Closing out her world, and walking out on everything we were, and would have been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for everyone for the kudos and the comments! I won't be following the plot of OITNB as closely, since Joniss is not Vauseman. But I will be drawing some inspiration from the original show. I waited until after I watched season 3, but I shouldn't have because WOW Jenji Kohan sure knows how to fuck up a female protagonist, doesn't she? *grumbles* ANYWAY ENJOY.
> 
> Thanks to Johannas-Motivational-Insults for her beta read and encouragement, as per usual. :)


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